


Architect

by jocillyria



Series: Architect [1]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-09-01
Updated: 2017-05-15
Packaged: 2018-04-18 13:43:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 17
Words: 33,334
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4708073
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jocillyria/pseuds/jocillyria
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU Season 3B. They've made it back from Neverland, but now they've got Pan to contend with in this land. How will they defeat his curse? Canon through 3x10.</p><p>Cross posted on ff.net.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Absolutely Not

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I don't own _Once Upon a Time_. I only borrow.

“Why would Pan even want the curse? I already cast it,” Regina said.

“And I broke it,” Emma added.

“That doesn’t mean you can’t cast it again. And this time, without your parents’ true love woven in, even you would be powerless to break it.” _Thanks for the cheerfulness, Gold._

David was a tad confused. “I don’t understand, we’re already in this land.”

“What exactly would casting the spell in Storybrooke do now?” Mary-Margaret questioned. Regina and Gold looked at each other.

“It would be like… before,” Gold told them. Emma utilized the stunned silence to call for Hook, Neal, and Tinker Bell to come down into the vault and to explain about the curse.

“Everyone inside the town line would forget who they are. Time wouldn’t move,” Regina added when Emma was done.

Hook addressed everyone but Mary-Margaret and David. “What about you? None of you were cursed before. “

“Henry wasn’t even born in the Enchanted Forest,” Neal added.

“It doesn’t matter. _Everyone_ in the town would forget,” Gold informed them, to everyone’s unhappiness.

“Why would Pan even want that? There would be no magic, how does that help him?” Mary-Margaret made a very good point.

“Again, like before. Magic could be brought back separate from the curse.” Gold spoke as though the group was full of dim-witted children. ”There would be magic, we just wouldn’t know that we can use it.”

Neal contemplated for a moment. “What if we just leave Storybrooke?”

Emma had to burst his bubble. “Everyone who was cursed before would forget as soon as they crossed the town line. With the exception of Gold, who has his… scarf… talisman… thing.” Well, and Smee, but she honestly didn’t think he’d be of much use anyway.

“So… those of us who can leave go. We’ll find a way to break it.” _Why am I not surprised that Neal wants to run?_ Emma thought.

“With what magic?” Regina was half-scoffing and half-serious. “There is no magic out there. There is no breaking the curse even with magic, not once it’s cast and we’ve forgotten.”

“Can we do something _before_ it’s cast?” David wondered.

“Aside from killing Pan before he can cast it? No.” Gold answered.

Mary-Margaret was doubtful. “You’re telling us that you and Regina, the writer and caster of the original curse, have absolutely no way to stop this from coming.”

Gold just looked at her in that _you should already know the answer to that_ way of his. “I’m sorry, have we been too vague on this point?”

Emma had gone from _glass nearly empty_ mode into _glass still nearly empty, but I’m the savior and I can’t get a damn day off_ mode. “We are standing in a crypt full of magic.”

“It’s a vault,” Regina interjected, somewhere between offended and annoyed.

“In this _vault_ full of magic, there’s no way we can protect the town?” Emma asked the two major-magic-users in the crypt. _There are hearts in boxes and we’re below a mausoleum, it’s a crypt_. No use pushing the point, though.

Hook, who had been mostly quiet for a while now, turned to Regina and asked about a shield. “Cora shielded a portion of the Enchanted Forest when your curse rolled through. Couldn’t you do the same?”

The formerly (though possibly still) evil queen rolled her eyes. “If you’ll recall, time was still frozen inside that bubble until the curse was broken. Even if we _could_ form some sort of shield, we’d still be unable to do anything.”

“What if we leave?” _And again with the running_ , Emma thought. She also thought she might not be being totally fair about Neal, but a decade of trust issues compounded on her pre-existing abandonment issues wasn’t something she could forgive overnight. Or in a week or two, whatever.

Mary-Margaret shook her head. “We already covered that. No one can cross the town line without-“

“I’m not talking about leaving Storybrooke. I’m talking about leaving this _land_.”

Tinker Bell, so quiet that Emma had almost forgotten she was there, chimed in. “And go where?”

David seemed to be on the same page as Neal. “The Enchanted Forest. We were trying to find a way home one before, anyway. Now seems as good a time as any to double those efforts.”

“And just how do you plan on getting us there?” The fairy had found her attitude again. “Pan’s shadow isn’t trapped in the sail anymore to make it fly, and, even if I _could_ get the pixie dust to work again, there’s not enough of it to cover the whole ship.” All good points. _Extra points for delivering logic with ‘tude._

“And, unless I’m mistaken, we’re all out of magic beans, so there’s no opening a portal.” Of course Gold would join in, though his attitude was a bit muted. Emma had been half-listening to everyone else while she tried to think of solutions. Though she couldn’t help but notice that Regina was suddenly looking a bit uncomfortable, and Emma wasn’t the only one to see it.

“Regina?” Tink asked with a raised brow. Regina just continued to look like she was _really_ trying to avoid saying something.

“Regina?” Emma’s voice was low, just short of threatening. _“_ You have an idea, don’t you? What is it?”

Regina sighed. “We don’t need a portal to get to the Enchanted Forest.” A statement to which many voices replied with “what?” in various tones of voice. “There’s another spell…” Regina trailed off. Whether that was due to the expressions of the people surrounding her or her reluctance to perform this particular piece of magic, it was anyone’s guess.

“And you didn’t think to mention this before?” Hook’s expression was one of those leaning more towards homicidal than confused.

“Well, it’s not like I’ve ever had the occasion to use it before!” Regina defended herself. “And it’s not exactly a transportation spell.”

A spell that would transport everyone to the Enchanted Forest, but wasn’t a transportation spell. Emma wasn’t really in the mood for riddles. “Then what is it?”

Regina sighed again. “It will send everyone back.”

“How is that not a transportation spell?” For once, Emma was of a mind with her father.

“Everyone will go back to where they’re from,” Regina explained. Everyone looked at each other. Again, some faces showed confusion, but most seemed to understand.

Henry, still wearing Pan’s body and using Pan’s kinda creepy voice, was the one to ask for confirmation. “So, everyone would go back to the land where they were born?”

 _Like hell._ “Absolutely not. Henry is _from_ here. I’m not leaving him alone.” Emma may have been a bit emphatic in her response, because both Hook and Neal were looking at her like… well… she had been a bit emphatic in her response. It had occurred to her that they, too, would go back to the Enchanted Forest.

“Would your spell affect only those in town?” Hook was still looking at Emma, even as he spoke to Regina.

“Yes. If I’m in Storybrooke when I cast it, only those inside the border will go back.”

“So, Emma, Henry, and I will leave before you cast it.” _And again with the running, Neal?_ “That way Henry won’t be alone.” Hook didn’t look thrilled with Neal’s suggestion. Emma wasn’t too fond of it herself.

“So, we just lose everyone else we care about?” She glanced briefly at Hook. “Sounds _great_.” Emma was _trying_ to be understanding about Neal, really. Probably. Okay, maybe she didn’t have the patience at the moment.

Mary-Margaret put a hand to her head. “So, to sum it up. Our options are to kill Pan, to be cursed, to be frozen in a timeless bubble, or to go back to the Enchanted Forest and leave some of our loved ones behind.”

“Yes.” Regina could be nothing if not direct.

“Um… If killing Pan is part of any plan, can we add ‘switch our bodies back’ before it?” Henry requested.

Emma was still thinking things through. “If you remembered… If you knew you had magic and how to use it… Could you break the curse after it was cast? I mean, nothing’s unbreakable, right?” She looked between Regina and Gold. Who then looked at each other.

After a bit of silent conversation, it was Gold who answered with “yes, but we have no way of remembering.”

“You remembered. Even after Regina cast her curse, you remembered that you’re Rumpelstiltskin.”

“I had a potion. I took it before the curse, it allowed me to retain my memories even as the persona of Mr. Gold was created.”

Emma couldn’t believe that this hadn’t been mentioned sooner. “So we make some of that! You and Regina take the potion and de-spellify the town afterwards.” _I can’t believe I’m suggesting we put the fate of the town in the hands of Regina and Rumpelstiltskin._

“There’s no time. It takes weeks to make the potion properly, and I doubt Pan’s going to give us even days.”

“So we go,” Emma said with a sigh and a shrug. “A couple of us leave before the curse hits, you give us _very_ precise instructions on how to make the potion, we come back when it’s ready and spike the punch at a town meeting.” _See, Neal. This isn’t running away with a very vague ‘see you later.’ This is a strategic relocation with a specific plan to return and fix shit. See the difference?_

“You would need magic for that, and as previously stated, there _isn’t_ any on the outside.” Regina through her hands up, obviously frustrated that no one was _getting it._

Emma shook her head at that. “Yes, there is. August told me about it. He saw some sort of healer in Hong Kong when he started turning to wood. There might be one nearby… If Tamara didn’t succeed in killing them all.” She added that last bit under her breath, but she could tell that Hook, at least, still heard her.

Neal looked like he was trying to suss it out. “So… leave, make the potion, find a genuine shaman or something, convince him to add his magic to it, then come back and hope it works?” Emma wasn’t appreciative of his tone of voice. He seemed very skeptical about finding a ‘genuine shaman or something’. _You know what, buddy? I haven’t heard anything better from you_.

Emma thought that Hook could tell she was annoyed. _Open book_ , she sighed to herself. He moved closer to her, barely grazing her arm with a couple of fingers, but it helped enough that she didn’t let her annoyance get the best of her. He turned again to Regina and Gold. “If this works, how will you break the curse? Is there some spell to undo what’s been done? Or…”

Gold responded, “without another way to break it written in, the curse is tied to the one that casts it. If we kill Pan…” Henry cleared his throat in the most obvious manner possible. “… _after_ we get Henry’s body back, of course. If we kill Pan, the curse will die with him.”

Emma put that plan on the ‘maybe’ pile. “Alright, we have three possible plans there; body-switch and then kill Pan, try to undo the curse after it’s cast, or Regina’s return spell. What about the shield?”

“What about it? Like I said, we’d be frozen. Even if you left town before it was cast, you would be frozen as soon as you stepped back in. _If_ you could get back in, which I don’t think you could.”

 _Why does everyone see only the problems?_ Emma mused. Then she called herself a hypocrite. “Could we do the same thing as with the curse? A couple people leave, you put up the shield, and we use a potion or something to get back inside and moving around, and to unfreeze you?” _Wasn’t I the one who was always saying ‘magic isn’t the answer?’ And now I’m actually_ pushing _to use it. If I hadn’t hated Pan before…_

David and Mary-Margaret had been whispering heatedly to each other. Mary-Margaret finally looked up at Emma. “Emma, I think our best chance… Is if you leave with Henry, and Regina casts her return spell.”

Emma was a little bit stunned. “Okay we’ll forget, for now, how you left me alone the first time a curse threatened people, because I can understand that now. What about Henry? He’ll lose just about everyone he knows and loves. Not to mention he’ll be stuck in a psychopath’s body. And Pan? You just want to give him a little slice of Neverland on Earth for anyone to fall into? A town in which he will have complete control over everything and everyone? In what way is that our best chance?”

David spoke up “maybe we should let the town vote. It’s not just us who’ll be affected.”

“The town’s almost certainly going to vote to go back. They’ve just wanted to go home for so long, they probably won’t think about the consequences for this land. With the shield, or trying to break the curse after, we keep Pan from getting what he wants, and maybe Regina would be willing to do her return spell later anyway.”

“You said to break the curse after it’s cast, we’d need to kill Pan, right? How will that be any easier after it’s cast than it is right now?” Tink asked.

“First of all, his guard will be down. If we get our memories back and play along for a bit, he might not see it coming. Second, we _might_ be able to find a counter-curse, if we have long enough to look. Third, we’ll have time to come up with something to render Pan’s magic useless, which should _definitely_ make him easier to kill.” Gold’s reasoning was sound, or so it seemed to Emma, but he still didn’t seem entirely comfortable with this plan.

“Here’s what I propose. Plan A: get Henry’s body back, then kill Pan. If that fails, we go to plan B: Regina tries to shield the town. Someone will come with me to find someone magical and make the… potions of mobility. If Regina can’t shield the town we go to plan C: Someone comes with me to find someone magical and make the potions for memory.” _Plan D: they go off to the Enchanted Forest and I spend the rest of my life finding a way to get there and slap them all silly._

Everyone was quiet. _David and Mary-Margaret know that arguing with me is pointless. Regina doesn’t want to leave Henry, and Gold knows that Neal doesn’t want to either._ Emma had no clue what Tink and Hook were thinking, they were both quiet and studiously avoiding eye contact with anyone else. Henry was also quiet, but he was looking around at everyone else. Finally, he spoke. “I agree with Emma. I know it’s risky, if we can’t kill Pan before he can work the curse, but you’re all my family, and I don’t want to lose you.”

And that was it. No one was going to argue with this boy they loved. This boy who had been abducted, had his heart ripped out (the fact that he ripped it out himself is irrelevant), and was shoved into the body of the psychopathic man-turned-teenager responsible for it all. Well, Hook and Tink might have argued, but they didn’t.

Emma waited a moment, until she was absolutely sure they would go along with it.

Hook broke the silence. “Plan A it is; returning Henry to his body and killing Pan. And Felix, since he’ll likely be right there fighting for his master.”

 _And he’s an annoying pain in the ass._ “Once upon a time I would’ve discouraged killing a brainwashed orphan. But he held my son hostage and tried to take away his hope.”

“Dibs.” _Aww, Regina, I wanted to say that._

“Let’s get going then,” Tink said in a tone that suggested she didn’t think this would work. “Off to kill Peter Pan.”


	2. Options

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you've read this work at FF already, you might notice some slight changes (grammar, slight wording changes) in a few chapters, since apparently I didn't proofread these well enough the first time around. The story's still the same, though!

_Well, that didn’t go as planned_. They had managed to get Pan and Henry back into their appropriate bodies, thanks to some help from a few items in Gold’s shop. And a literal cat-and-mouse, though that’s a much longer story which isn’t important in the long run. Gold tried to kill Pan, Pan returned the favor. Neither was dead, though Gold was in pretty rough shape.

They had informed the town of the impending doom, along with Plans A, B, and C. (After some heated debate, they had formulated an alternative to plan B. If Regina could get a shield up, it would only last for four months. After that, if Emma couldn’t get the potions, the return spell would kick in. Regina had decided that if it couldn’t be done in four months, it couldn’t be done.)

The townspeople were, understandably, upset. Some just cried, some tried to come up with other solutions. _If we could make a magic mirror portal thing, don’t you think we would’ve by now?_ A few helped with later attempts to kill Pan, but the little twerp managed to escape each time. They did manage to capture Felix, though. They carted him back to the jail cell and kept a heavy guard around him, with him spouting his usual “Pan never fails” crap the whole way. It was as much to help the town as to punish him. Supposedly Pan needed to kill the thing he loved most for the curse. Felix was probably the closest he had to a loved one.

 _Seriously, can’t we gag him or something? No, Emma, you’re the sheriff; you can’t just gag people when they’re annoying. But he’s_ evil _. No, he was brainwashed by an evil person. Not only did he not try to help get Henry’s heart back, he didn’t even want to leave Neverland. … You still can’t gag him._

Emma was beginning to develop a complex with her inner debates. Gag Felix, don’t gag Felix. Kill him, don’t kill him. The only thing the two sides of her agreed on was to use him as bait if necessary. Though, she doubted that Pan cared about Felix past wanting a devout follower to agree with his every word and obey his commands without question. And, you know, to die.

That was all within a day of finding out that Pan was in possession of the curse. The day after, Mary-Margaret cornered Emma while she was packing for her potential, though seemingly inevitable, search for a magic-wielder in the Land Without Magic. (None of the multiple attempts on Pan’s life by multiple people had yielded anything even close to the desired effect.)

“When are you and Neal planning on leaving?”

Emma looked at her mother with a quizzical look on her face. “I’m not going with Neal.”

“What? Why not? You can’t go alone.” Mary-Margaret looked seriously alarmed.

Emma continued to stuff clothes into her bag. “I wasn’t planning on going alone, but I’m not taking Neal with me. I’m not going to search for a way to save Storybrooke with someone I’m going to be second-guessing all the time. The _entire_ time we were down in that vault talking about options, everything he came up with amounted to ‘run away’. And that’s what he does, he runs when things get tough. I refuse to split my focus between doing what needs to be done and wondering if he’s going to be there when I turn around.”

“What’s this really about, Emma?” Mary-Margaret started walking around Emma’s room, dumping random items on her bed next to the bag. _Really, Mary-Margaret? In what world does a rescue mission require a cocktail dress and a dictionary?_

Emma sighed and ceased her packing. After returning the dictionary to the bookshelf, she turned to face her mother.“As you may or may not know… Neal set me up, got me arrested, and abandoned me all because August, excuse me, _Pinocchio_ , told him to. He said it was so that I could fulfill my destiny, but it was really because he was afraid of running into his father. Because he was afraid of magic. After the curse was broken, he could’ve come to see me. He could’ve called, but he chose not to. He was still afraid of running into his dad. In New York, he told me that if he had known who I was, he wouldn’t have gone anywhere near me. How am I supposed to trust someone who betrayed me and wanted nothing to do with me when he knew what I was?”

Mary-Margaret had stopped her random browsing as well. “You said you still love him.”

“I do, I probably always will. But it’s because of what we were. We were young thieves, living life on the road with just each other to depend on. Everything seemed so easy, even when we were running from cops. It was exciting, and he could make me laugh. But I’m not in love with him anymore. And he’s not in love with me either; he just hasn’t realized that he doesn’t even know me anymore.” Emma dumped an armful of underwear and socks into the bag.

“He’s Henry’s father.”

“And, because of that, I’m trying. I’m _trying_ to trust him again. Do you know how tiring it is to force yourself to find reasons to trust someone?” She shoved a sweatshirt and a few t-shirts into the bag more forcefully than was probably necessary.

Either Mary-Margaret couldn’t think of a good argument after that, or she didn’t feel it was necessary. She just pulled out the wrinkled clothes stuffed haphazardly in Emma’s bag and folded them. “Don’t forget your toothbrush.” _Moms._

~~~

That day after _that_ enjoyable conversation, Pan’s shadow managed to break Felix out again, this time putting Tinker Bell (who had been one of those on guard at the time) in the hospital. She was still unconscious. No one knew what exactly had happened to the fairy, other than that her shadow hadn’t been ripped away and she wasn’t the victim of your average blunt force trauma.

Regina called the group from the vault together and told them that it was coming. They had known it would be soon. “Three hours at most, probably less.”

Which was when the arguing started again. As Emma loaded a suitcase and a bag full of cash and blank fake IDs (all courtesy of Regina and Mr. Gold) into her car, she told Neal to give her the keys to his apartment in New York.

“Don’t worry, I won’t lock you out when we get there,” he replied with a smile, as though it was some kind of joke.

“Neal, you’re not coming with me.” _Seriously, is that_ shock _on his face?_

“What do you mean I’m not going with you?”

“It really only has the one meaning. Will you give me your keys, or not?”

“Who’s going with you if not me?”

“Does it matter?”

“Yes, actually. Who are you taking on this _very important_ mission to save an entire town if you’re not taking me? Are you going alone?” Emma’s eyes involuntarily flicked to Hook, who was actually putting forth the effort to pretend that he couldn’t hear them. “You’ve got to be kidding me!”

Emma turned and looked Neal straight in the eye. “Neal, I’m not taking you with me. This is a trip to find someone who can use magic. You hate magic. I’m not going to take the chance that your disdain will show on your face while I’m trying to convince a potentially volatile, magically-inclined person to help us.”

“And you think that _Hook_ is a better choice? He’s a pirate! A villain.” By this point Hook had walked a good distance away. _Good, I didn’t really want to have any version of this conversation with Neal within Hook’s earshot._

Emma sighed and looked at the sky. “Why does everyone always say ‘pirate’ like it’s both a bad thing and all that he is? Yes, he’s a pirate. Maybe he was a villain once, but he’s proven that I can trust him.” Neal looked like he was going to verbally explode again. “Neal, you’re not coming with me. I’d rather go alone than pretend that I can trust you with this. Can I have your keys or not?” Neal looked at her for a minute. Well, 51 seconds (she counted). Then he slammed his keys on the trunk of the car and walked off in a huff. _That better not scratch the paint._

She walked over to Hook. “Well, love. Off on your adventure then?” _Yeah, probably should have brought this up sooner…_

“Depends, are you coming with me?” To the uncertain expression that was his response she added, “I could use a navigator.” They both had a small smile for that. After a moment Hook nodded. Emma let out a small sigh of relief. “We should leave in less than two hours, so go get whatever you need. Your hook will draw too much attention, so I’d prefer if you bring your… other attachment.” She gave him a big grin, enjoying using the innuendo he had used so long ago in a completely practical, and nonsexual, manner. Hook gave her another small smile and made off for the docks. _Also probably should’ve mentioned different clothes… and maybe that an apparently bottomless flask of rum isn’t necessary..._

She made her way back to her car where Mary-Margaret, Regina, and Henry were waiting for her. Mary-Margaret and Regina both had bags at their feet. Emma’s mom pulled her into a long hug ( _too tight, Mom. I think you’re overcompensating for 28 years of no hugs)_ , and picked up two of the bags. “First-aid kit, and a bag of miscellaneous stuff that you didn’t pack but should’ve.” _Again, moms._ “Thanks, Mom,” Emma replied with a smile. Mary-Margaret’s smile was huge at being called ‘Mom,’ even though she was barely keeping from crying.

Regina held up the smallest of the bags she had brought with her. “This has the instructions for all the potions; the ingredients, how to make them, how to administer them, yadda yadda. I also included the ingredients that we already had, and a basic guide to magic.” _Please tell me it’s called_ Spelling for Dummies _, please._

Regina pulled Emma out of earshot of Henry and Mary-Margaret. “You need to take Henry with you.” The younger mom was shocked. “What?” Not that she didn’t love her son, but a quest for a witch probably wasn’t the best place for him. Even if he’d love going on a quest. Especially if she actually called it a quest.

Regina sighed. “If I can get the shield up, he’ll be frozen here until you get back. If you don’t get back in time, everyone he knows will pop away and he’ll be left all alone. If I _can’t_ get the shield up… I don’t want Henry anywhere near Pan, especially if none of us will remember that Pan’s a threat.”

Emma looked back at Henry. “Hook and I are probably going to be constantly on the move, and-“

“You’re taking _Hook_?”

“Regina, priorities. We’ll be constantly moving, and I don’t know how much safer he’ll be out there. If we manage to find someone with magic, we’ll have to risk that person being… unfriendly.” _But I really don’t want to say goodbye to my son._

“Okay, you like options, right? Option A: Henry stays here, shield falls, everyone leaves and he’s alone. Option B: Henry stays here, curse sweeps through, Pan wreaks havoc and possibly destroys him. Option C: Henry goes with you, and you keep him as safe as possible. If anything goes wrong here, at least he’ll be safe and he’ll have a parent.” Regina obviously disliked those options as much as Emma did. There was no safe place for their son. Emma nodded.

“Good. I have his bags packed already.”

They returned to the car, where David had joined Mary-Margaret and Henry. As Regina loaded Henry’s bags into the trunk and threw a pillow and blanket into the backseat, and told him that he was going on the grand adventure, David took Emma aside. _My, aren’t I popular today._ He handed her an envelope. After she looked inside she hugged him. “Be careful,” he told his daughter. “Thanks, Dad.”

Hook had returned. Aside from his glove “attachment,” he hadn’t brought much else. Although Emma did see a flask. “Packing light?” She asked him.

“Well, I thought swords and daggers might draw some attention.”

“That it would. Which is why we have these.” She gave him a handgun, showing him her own as she did.

“We’ve gone from you stealing my hook to you giving me a weapon. My, how far we’ve come.” _How far indeed. I’m not even thinking about how you shot Belle. Well, maybe a little._

“Henry’s coming with us.” A small crowd had gathered around her car. _Seriously, what’s with the popularity all of the sudden? Can’t leaving for a rescue mission ever be just a small family affair?_

“Ah, young sir. Ready for an adventure?”

“As long as I get to stay in my body this time.” Henry accepted a round of hugs and then jumped in the backseat. Emma also got a round of hugs and well-wishes from several people in town, some of whom she wasn’t even sure she knew. To Emma’s surprise, David shook Hook’s hand and wished him well (and Emma was pretty sure she heard “take care of my daughter,” followed by an “always”). Mary-Margaret gave Hook a hug and told him pretty much the same thing. This surprised Emma even more than David’s congeniality with the pirate. Snow White might be grateful that Captain Hook had saved her Prince Charming, but she had still been pushing Emma pretty hard in Neal’s direction. _Hopefully our talk made her understand that things between Neal and me aren’t likely to go that way._

Neal and Gold had both stopped by to say goodbye to Henry. Neal was pissed that his son was leaving town with “that _pirate_ ,” but couldn’t refute Regina’s logic. He did try to make another argument for _him_ going, instead of Hook, but Emma just gave him a look that managed to simultaneously say _bored, annoyed, shut the hell up, not even listening,_ and _are you kidding me?_ Gold threw Emma a succinct “good luck.” Regina offered “don’t screw up.” _So courteous. I should ask for the name of her etiquette teacher._

Instead, she asked how they would know whether the shield worked or not. Since they were leaving before either the curse would hit or the shield went up, it’s not like they could just find out when it happened. “If the shield holds, it will be like a faint purple dome over the town. If the curse breaks through, there won’t be a dome over the town.”

_Simple enough, I like simple._

“Alright, Hook, get in the car. Let’s get this show on the road.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Reviews are food, and constructive criticism is dessert!


	3. Wrong Turn

As the yellow car made its way out of Storybrooke, the town’s inhabitants got to work on their last-ditch effort. With less than two hours to go, they had one last chance to kill Pan before he could enact the curse.

Regina ensconced herself in her vault. She was to stay out of the way, protected, in case they failed. It wouldn’t do to have Pan kill the person who was going to shield the town, or at least try to break the curse later if the shield failed.

Mary Margaret, David, the dwarves, Red… pretty much everyone else (save Gold) armed up. Bows, swords, axes, a shotgun, they would use whatever they had. Most of their earlier attempts on Pan had been (well, tried to be) crafty, luring him into town or having Neal set traps outside its borders. This was going to be a head-on assault. Or it would have been, had Pan not been staying outside the town lines. He wouldn’t enter Storybrooke until the curse was cast. The mob, dejected, dispersed to spend what could be their last aware moments with their loved ones.

Gold spent the time in his shop, talking with Belle and hiding away anything that he wouldn’t risk Pan getting his hands on. He and Belle went with Mary Margaret, David, and Neal to get Regina and bring her to the center of town.

Just as the green smoke that carried the curse reached Storybrooke’s borders, Regina raised the shield. Well, technically, she activated the spell that she and Gold had written earlier, which was both the shield and the return spell. As she poured nearly every drop of her magic into it, a faint purple dome spread over the town and everyone inside froze.

\---

“You made a wrong turn,” Henry told his mom an hour or so after they left town. “This isn’t the way to New York.”

“We’re making a stop in Boston, first.” Emma was tense, which Hook noticed. She kept glancing at the clock and her phone, which was sitting on the dash. Two hours to the minute after they had gotten into the car, she did something which seemed strange to both of her passengers. She rolled down the window, picked up her phone, and tossed it out. As it shattered on the highway behind them, she simply rolled the window back up and wiped a tear from her face.

“Mom... why’d you do that?”

“I’d like to know the same. I may not be familiar with some of your customs, but destroying your phone hardly seems necessary for a successful trip.” Hook was looking at her with some concern. He glanced back at Henry and saw that the boy was also looking at Emma with worry.

“Two hours. When we left, Regina said they had two hours at most to stop Pan before the curse rolled in. Mary Margaret would have called me, but she didn’t, so they’re either cursed or they’re frozen. Either way, we can’t risk Pan learning a few tricks of this land and tracking my phone if he knows that we’re gone… We’ll pick up some burners in Boston.” And she focused on nothing but the road.

“What’s in Boston?” Henry asked. As far as he knew, she hadn’t left anything behind when she moved to Storybrooke. Well she had, but then she’d had it shipped to her, so that didn’t count.

“A… friend. She might be able to help us find someone with magic.” She peeked at Henry through the rearview mirror and noticed him yawning. He’d been almost constantly tired since they had switched him back into his body. _Damn cat. Gold said it would wear off soon, though. Try not to worry about it for a few more days… Yeah, that’ll happen._ “Why don’t you sleep for a bit, we’re still a couple of hours from Boston.”

Henry laid down in the back, head on his pillow, and was asleep in moments. Within another few moments, Hook was asking questions.

“Who’s in Boston?”

“Like I said, a… friend.”

“You seem rather hesitant to call her a friend,” Hook observed.

“She’s more like a former colleague, I guess.” Emma felt like squirming in her seat. Her former colleague wasn’t someone she usually enjoyed running into. Aside from the occasions on which she had needed her butt saved, but those never count.

“Another bail bondsperson? How will she be able to help?” Hook, sensing Emma’s discomfort, opted for unfolding the roadmap and pretending to peruse it rather than looking at her.

Emma sighed and scratched the back of her head. “First off, if we find her, remember that she prefers the term ‘bounty hunter,’ and it’s a better description for her. As for helping… In the two years I knew her, she would occasionally talk about magic like it existed. I thought she was just a little crazy, which she might be, but she always looked like she let something slip whenever she said anything about it. I’m hoping she knows someone who can help us with the potions. Hopefully the price won’t be too high if she can.” Emma glanced at Hook. “Much like Gold, she rarely does anything for free.”

“Didn’t Regina and Rumpelstiltskin give you a bag full of money? Would it really take so much to just get a name?” Hook gave up on pretending to care about the map. He much preferred navigating by the stars, and Emma seemed to know where she was going.

“She won’t want money, she doesn’t need it. Again, like Gold, she prefers favors. I’m _hoping_ that she’ll just want me to help her with a skip, or that she’ll just make me do something embarrassing… like karaoke or something.” Emma was looking straight ahead now, which was probably a good thing, since she was driving.

“What’s karaoke?”

“Singing in public, usually drunk or in front of drunk people.” She said this like it was an awful punishment.

“That doesn’t sound so terrible.”

“You haven’t heard me sing.”

“Why would she ask for such a price?”

“Same reason she’s a bounty hunter; amusement. Like I said, she doesn’t need money. She’s filthy rich and gets bored easily.”

“Well, if we find her, anything else I should know?”

“Her name is Kyrie. At least, that’s the name she went by when I knew her. Let’s see… Bounty hunter rather than bail bondsperson… Bores easily… She can be moody, touchy. Sometimes talking to her is like playing Russian roulette… With grenades.” Emma saw Hook’s questioning look from the corner of her eye.

_Right, hard to know what Russian roulette means if your land doesn’t have revolvers… Or Russia._

“In Russian roulette, you put a bullet in one chamber of a revolver, spin it around, point the gun at your head, and pull the trigger without knowing if that’s going to be the time it actually fires.”

“So… a volatile woman, then.”

“She can be. If she and her boyfriend aren’t on the outs again she should be in a better mood. What else… if she does get mad, it’s better if she’s yelling than if she’s quiet. Silent anger usually means she’s plotting, and that usually ends with injury.”

“Anything likely to set her off?”

“Skin-on-skin contact.” Hook raised a suggestive eyebrow. “Not like that… But don’t touch her skin; don’t even shake her hand if it’s bare. Remind me to tell Henry about that when he wakes up. If you feel the need to punch her, wear a glove. She usually wears full-arm gloves and rarely has any skin showing below her neck, so it probably won’t be a problem. Don’t press the issue if she takes a while to decide whether or not she’ll help. She loathes people trying to make her do anything, and she’ll probably say ‘no’ just out of spite.”

“Why are we seeking help from someone so capricious?” _Good question. But I’d rather not say that it’s mostly just a gut feeling._

“Like I said, I’m pretty sure she knows something about true magic. And despite being… unstable… Kyrie has saved my butt on more than one occasion. For some reason she dislikes me less than most people.” Emma smiled a little at that. “Her exact words.”

“Anything else?” Hook actually sounded wary. Truth be told, she was pretty sure that Kyrie would like Hook, despite her ‘capriciousness’. Kyrie appreciated people who refused to pretend at a personality. She had once said that unless you’re manipulating someone, there’s no reason to act as anyone other than yourself. (This was shortly after she was nearly killed for mouthing off to a mobster. Kyrie didn’t do ass-kissing.)

_Best just to get the rest out of the way._

“She’s a shameless flirt, she likes to be cryptic, she takes lying very personally, and she’d kill anyone who betrayed her, not that anyone would ever dare. If she decides to help, she might just give us a name. Or she might decide to come along for the whole thing, and it’d be a bad idea to refuse her. If she decides you’re worth it, she’s loyal to the end. Or, if she decides you’re worth it, she’ll make it a mission in life to make you miserable.”

“I think I knew someone like her once.”

“You’re three hundred years old, you’ve probably known someone like everyone once,” Emma said dryly.

They drove in silence for over an hour, Henry snoring lightly in the backseat and Hook looking contemplative.

“Why did you want me to come with you? Wouldn’t Neal be better suited for a search in your world? Not that I’m unhappy you invited me along, of course.”

_I was wondering when that would come up._

Emma had already decided to give him the same answer she had given Neal. “Neal may know this world better, he certainly knows New York better, but he hates magic. He wouldn’t be able to hide that from someone we need to convince to help us.”

“What’s the real reason?” Just as Emma was about to ask how he knew that wasn’t the truth, he reminded her, “open book, love.”

Emma sighed. “Do I really have to answer that?”

“Well I certainly can’t make you, but I’m curious.”

She sighed again. “Can we talk about that later, then? I’m not up for it right now.” _I’ve had enough of talking about Neal for one… ever._

“As you wish.” Emma smiled to herself. In addition to reminding her of _The Princess Bride_ (as most young girls, she had loved the romantic-comedic-adventure movie), those words also brought to mind their kiss in Neverland, which had definitely not been an unpleasant experience.

“Can you grab the small bag behind my seat? We should take care of our IDs before we get to Boston.”

She also instructed him to pull the envelope David had given her out of the glove box. _Do people even keep actual gloves in those things anymore?_

The bag held, in addition to a ridiculously large amount of cash, a packet of blank fake IDs which Gold had secured for her. She could have gotten them herself, but he was able to handle it much quicker. She didn’t really want to admit it, but they were also of a higher quality than those she could have gotten. The envelope that David gave her had held a necklace, which she was now wearing, and photos. He had managed to get pictures of both Emma and Hook that could be used in the IDs. Not an easy feat. While they could just pull Emma’s from her real driver’s license and passport, Hook didn’t exactly stand around while people took pictures of him. Since Emma hadn’t thought to ask Hook to accompany her when she had decided her plan, David had had to improvise. He snuck a few photos after the fourth attempt on Pan failed, and managed to Photoshop them into looking like they had been taking officially. _For someone who grew up with portraits and parchment, he’s gotten good at using a computer._

Emma told Hook how to add the photos to the IDs in a way that would look real. She also told him to memorize the information on his fake driver’s license and passport.

“Killian James of Boston, Massachusetts,” he read. “I suppose Captain Hook would raise a few too many brows,” he commented, giving her a look she couldn’t quite decipher. “And Pan might look for a Killian Jones. Why Boston and not someplace in Maine? My unfamiliarity with the city might seem suspicious to some.”

“Massachusetts plates on the car. If anyone asks why you seem out of place, say you’ve spent more time traveling than you have at home.” _True enough, though I suppose his ship is his home._ “Remind me to tell Henry that we’ll need to call you Killian in public.”

There was that look again. “Of course, love.”

“I’ll use my real name in Boston, because I’ll have to talk with people who know me, but when we leave I’ll switch over to my fake.”

Hook read off of her fake passport. “Emma Turner?”

Emma had given Gold _a look_ when she had seen that. Now she just let out half of a huffy-chuckle. “There’s a series of movies called _Pirates of the Caribbean_. One of the main characters is named Elizabeth Swann, but she gives the name Turner when she’s abducted by pirates. I think Gold got a kick out of it for some reason.”

“Are there perms and waxed mustaches in these films as well?” Hook asked. He seemed to be getting some amusement from it also.

Emma laughed. “Actually, the captain, or at least one of them, is much more like you than your cartoon persona.”

“Hmm… I suppose someday I’ll have to watch these films, judge for myself.”

Emma grinned at him. “Any chance I could be there for that? I’d like to see your reaction to the Captain Hook that most of this world knows.”

Hook was about to answer when Emma’s grin faded. She turned on her blinker and moved the car onto the off ramp. “Henry, wake up. Sit up and put on your seatbelt.” Henry complied slowly.

“Are we here?” He asked sleepily.

“Yeah kid. Welcome back to Boston.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah, sorry about the long bit about Kyrie (rhymes with eerie), but it’ll be kind of important later. And Hook will be back to his full-of-swagger self shortly.


	4. Inner Sarcastic Voice

“Can we get something to eat?”

“Yeah, Kid, we’ll stop in a minute.” Emma had to smile, remembering the first not-a-road-trip she had taken with Henry. “We should get a hotel room for the night, too.”

She wasn’t particularly happy to be back in Boston. It wasn’t the worst place she had lived, and it wasn’t exactly full of painful memories, but it wasn’t full of happy ones either. Mary Margaret had said that Tinker Bell’s treehouse in Neverland was just a place to sleep, and that’s sort of what Boston in general was for Emma. It was just a place to be. It hadn’t been hard to pick up and move to Storybrooke because she hadn’t had anything tying her to Boston.

“I just want to get gas and some supplies first.”

“What was wrong with all the other places?” Henry asked as she pulled the car up to a pump at a rundown gas station. A fair enough question, as they had passes a least a dozen others since they entered the city.

“I want to talk to the owner real quick, too.”

Hook and Henry both got out of the car to stretch their legs while she filled the tank.

“Do you guys want to wait out here? I should only be a minute.”

“Mom, I’ve been in the car for four hours.”

Hook was similarly appreciative of the opportunity to move around a bit.

“Can Killian and I go get something to eat while you talk?” Henry pointed at a diner across the street. (Hook had dutifully reminded Emma of the things she needed to tell Henry.)

“Umm… yeah, that’s fine with me. As long as H- Killian is okay with it.” When she looked at Hook, he was looking back at her with that same indecipherable expression that he had worn when he saw his ID.

“Of course, love. Lead the way, young sir.” Hook bowed to Henry and swept his arm to the side. He sent a wink Emma’s way after Henry had passed him. She gave him a small smile.

“Alright, I’ll meet you over there in a few minutes, then.”

In the store, she grabbed a wide selection of snacks and six disposable cell phones, two for each of them. Her precautions were possibly unnecessary, as Pan wasn’t terribly likely to learn how to track a cell phone, but she wasn’t willing to leave it to chance. The owner turned towards her when she set the merchandise on the counter. “Emma!” He cried.

“Hello Mr. Paulson, how have you been?” She’d forgotten that she liked the old man. He always had a smile, even when she was helping a bounty hunter take his son back to jail. Granted, he had been the one to call in the tip saying his son was there, but still.

“Well, you know.” Yeah, she knew. _Economy sucks, nobody stops at the mom-and-pop places anymore, son’s a good-for-nothing brat in prison for the third time. And yet, he smiles._

“Where have you been? I feel as though I haven’t seen you in years!”

“I moved actually; this is the first time I’ve been back in Boston for a while.”

“And you stopped here! I’m honored.” Mr. Paulson was always smiling and sincere. Emma was fairly certain that if someone robbed the place he would still be smiling while he emptied his register and scolded the thief.

“Well, you always have the best candy,” she said with a grin. It was even true; he always had things that the large chains had stopped carrying, like sour gummy straws and Warheads. “I was wondering, have you seen Kyrie lately?” The bounty hunter had been the one to introduce Emma to Mr. Paulson, during the aforementioned seizure of his son.

“Not for a few days. She still comes around, though.”

“I’ve been trying to get in touch with her, and the last number I had for her is out of service. Could I leave a letter for her with you?”

“Of course! I’ll give it to her as soon as she comes in again.”

“Thanks, Mr. Paulson, I appreciate it.” After she paid for her gas and goodies with Regina’s money, she activated one of the phones. She wrote a note for Kyrie saying simply ‘Call me, it’s important.- Emma’ with her new number underneath. She thanked Mr. Paulson again and left the letter with him. He smiled and waved goodbye to her from the window as she left to drive to the diner. _That man is abnormally cheerful._

When Emma pulled up to the diner she could see Hook and Henry through the window. They were drinking sodas and laughing about something. She was relieved. Though Henry hadn’t really had any negative experiences with Hook, she had worried that her son wouldn’t like the pirate. _Should’ve known. An apparently nonfictional character with interesting stories of adventure. Of course Henry likes him._

She left the snacks and phones, except the one she’d already activated, in the car.

“Well, we’ve got phones and enough junk food to sustain us for days,” she announced as she slid in the booth next to Henry. He nodded in reply, and Hook just gave her a smile.

“Killian’s been telling me stories.” _Of course he has._

“Nothing terrible, love. Mostly from my days in the navy,” Hook was sure to mention. Emma wasn’t actually all that worried. Hook probably had some terrible stories to tell, to be sure, but she trusted him with her son. She _was_ feeling a little… fond?... of him for telling Henry stories that almost certainly included his brother.

“By all means, continue. I wouldn’t mind hearing some of those myself, Killian.” And again with that look. _Huh, is it the name thing? I guess I’ve never really called him by his given name._ She shrugged internally, _not something to think about now_.

Their waitress was all smiles as she brought out Henry’s and Hook’s orders (a burger and a steak, respectively). She was extra smiley, if possible, when she put Hook’s plate in front of him. Her smile lost a little of its luster when she saw Emma. “Can I get you a menu?”

“I’ll have one of what he’s having,” Emma replied, pointing at Henry’s plate. The waitress nodded and headed off to the kitchen to place the order. Emma saw her drop the smile just before she was out of sight.

“Have you arrested her too, then?”

“Hmm?”

“Well, she was perfectly friendly until you came in. I’d think you’d have to at least _talk_ to someone before you made an enemy,” Hook told her with a teasing smirk. She could tell by that smirk that he knew as well as she did that the waitress was annoyed with the apparent competition for Hook’s attention.

“I must have upped my game,” she replied. “So, how about those stories?”

Hook kept Emma and Henry laughing through most of their dinner, telling them stories about his early days in the navy. Apparently he’d been rather good at dropping things, falling over when a big wave hit, and running into various large objects on deck. It was hard for her to reconcile the confident (ahem, cocky) pirate she knew with a bumbling sailor who had barely gotten his feet wet. At the same time, she somehow had no problem picturing him as a sailor doing his duty for his king rather than a pirate who did nothing for anyone but himself. Then again, she hadn’t really seen him as that pirate in a while.

After she paid the tab (the waitress looking almost glum by this point, hopefully the tip would make up for it), they stuffed themselves back into the Bug and headed for a motel she knew.

Hook and Henry followed her inside. They distracted themselves with the brochure stand and pictures on the wall as she spoke with the desk clerk. “How many nights will you be staying?”

“Just the one, for now.”

“Alright, ma’am, and how many rooms will you need?” _Good question._

“Hey, Killian,” Emma called across the small and empty lobby. “Do you want your own room?”

“Oh, I’m sure we’ll be fine with one,” he replied with a smirk. She gave him a warning look accompanied by a pointed glance at her son. _And the innuendo returns._ She couldn’t say she was surprised, or even disappointed really. She had almost missed his teasing. _Just not around my son, please._

“One room, two queen beds,” she said as she turned back to the clerk.

“Alright, you’ll be in room 116. Here are your cardkeys, and your room is just down the hall to the right.”

She took the cards and thanked the clerk. “Alright boys, let’s grab our stuff.”

She left most of the bags in the car, grabbing only her overnight bag, the bag of magic stuff, Henry’s bag, and the bag o’ cash. She did make sure to grab her gun and check that Hook had his. “It probably goes without saying, but we don’t want you to get caught with that. I didn’t think to have a gun license forged for you.”

“Not to worry,” Hook assured her as he tucked the gun under his long jacket. She took a moment to appraise him.

“Speaking of going unseen… any chance I could convince you to wear something less conspicuous?”

“Trying to get me out of my clothes are you, Swan?”

_Not yet. I mean… absolutely not. Don’t go there, self. It’s not the moment._ Sometimes it was so damned difficult to focus when he smirked at her like that.

“In New York most people probably wouldn’t even blink at you. But in Boston, at least, you stick out like… Well, a pirate in Boston.”

“Eloquent.” _How did he get so close to me?_ She could easily grab him by the jacket and-

“Mom, what’s the room number again?” Henry ducked his head out of the motel. Emma managed to take a few steps backward.

“116, I’ll be right there.”

“Okay,” her son shrugged and closed the door.

She cleared her throat. “So, um, clothes?”

“If the lady insists,” Hook answered. “If we aren’t to be in this city for long, though, will it be necessary? As you said, in New York I should be fine.”

“Yeah, I guess. But if anyone here asks, you’re going to a costume party.” She grabbed the bags and headed inside.

“Oh? And what is my costume?” Hook asked playfully as he followed her.

She grinned over her shoulder at him. “I’m sure you’ll come up with something interesting.”

Henry was already sitting at a table and looking through his story book by the time they got there.

“Kid, why don’t you take a shower and get ready for bed? It’s been a long day.”

“I slept in the car.”

“And I can tell you’re still tired, so don’t even try.”

Henry rolled his eyes and grumbled as he dug through his bag for his toothbrush. “I’m probably just going to be sitting in the car all day tomorrow, anyway. I can sleep then.” His grumbling was cut off when he shut the bathroom door.

Emma closed her eyes for a minute and just breathed deep. _That came sooner than I thought it would_. “Door or window?” She asked Hook as she opened her eyes.

“Sorry?”

“Do you want the bed by the door or the window?”

“Either is fine.”

“I’ll let Henry choose then. Give him at least some say in this ‘grand adventure’.” Emma set the bags of money and magic in the small dresser between the beds.

“He’ll be alright, love.” Hook watched her with concern

“I know. I just don’t know that he realizes that this is how it’ll be. We’ll be looking for someone with magic, looking over our shoulders for Pan, and making sure Henry’s safe. This ‘grand adventure’ is going to include a lot of Henry sitting around doing nothing and hating it.” _And there’s that suffocating feeling I was waiting for. Hello old friend, I’m surprised you kept me waiting._

“He’ll be alright. He’ll understand, even if he hasn’t yet.” When Emma didn’t reply beyond a perfunctory nod of her head, he decided it was time for a subject change. “What’s on the agenda for tomorrow?”

“I want to drop by Kyrie’s apartment. If she’s not there I’ll stop at a few places I know she frequents and leave letters.”

“Aren’t you afraid someone might read them?”

“They don’t say much, and they’re in code. After that, I’d like to leave for New York.”

“Why New York? Didn’t you say the healer that August told you of was in Hong Kong?”

“Yeah, he’s also very dead. New York attracts lots of kinds of people. At the very least we’ll be able to ask around, maybe get a hint on somewhere else to look. We’ll probably have to go out of the country eventually.” Which made her realize that she hadn’t known to have papers made for her son. She dug through his bag. “Good, Regina had Gold get a passport for Henry, too.” Gold have even given them the same last name. Convenient, as two Turners and a James going through customs wouldn’t raise flags like a juvenile Mills with two dissimilarly named adults.

Henry came out of the bathroom freshly showered and dressed in his pajamas.

“Henry, should we take the bed by the window or the door?”

“Door.” Hook seemed to draw some conclusion from this short answer that Emma missed. _I’ll have to find some way of bringing that up without making it look like I’m asking him for insight into my own son. And suddenly I know how Regina felt when she didn’t know about the story book._

“Alright.” She waited a moment to see if he’d say anything else. When he just climbed under the covers of his chosen bed, she sat next to him and told him the (very short-term) plan. “Tomorrow after we get up it’s going to be check out, breakfast, search for an old friend of mine, then leave for New York.”

“Fine, goodnight mom.” After a moment he added “goodnight Killian.”

Emma looked at Hook with an almost helpless look on her face. She had to find a way to save her town while keeping her son safe from a psychopathic teenager who may or may not be looking for them. Which, for the moment at least, meant letting Henry be unhappy. _Better bored and unhappy than excited and dead… Not that that makes this any easier._ In not even a few hours they had gone from laughing through dinner to him barely speaking to her. The playfulness she had felt earlier flirting with Hook, that warmth when they were all laughing over dinner, the few good moments she’d had earlier that day were forgotten. _Though given the circumstances that set this trip in motion, maybe I shouldn’t be having them at all._

As she grasped the necklace that her father had given her, Hook brushed his hand against the side of her face. “He’ll be alright,” he whispered before he got in his own bed and turned out the light.

_Yes, I’m sure we’ll all wake up tomorrow and everything will be A-okay. And I haven’t been overusing my inner sarcastic voice today at all._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you're interested in how (in this story) Pan and Henry switched bodies back, check out the companion piece A Xylophone, a Teaspoon, and a Magic Wand.
> 
> Reviews are food and constructive criticism is dessert! Seriously, though.


	5. Knocking Creatively

The morning started off mundane. Checkout went smoothly; Emma even remembered to grab the bags she had stashed in the dresser drawer. She activated two of the other phones and gave them to Hook and Henry after programming each other’s numbers in all three. The diner where they ate breakfast had decent food, but Henry was quiet the entire time. His silence was full of glum resignation rather than annoyance or anger, though. _I’m not even sure that’s better._

Hook had tried to engage them in conversation with more stories, but Henry wasn’t interested and Emma wasn’t in the mood to be cheered up. She was currently trying to work out how to keep an eye on Henry while keeping him out of harm’s way during their search. It’s not like she could lock him in the car with the window cracked every time she needed to go somewhere and talk to someone. She trusted Hook enough to leave Henry with him, but she’d need Hook’s help. Which meant that Henry would have to go with them, potentially exposing him to people who might sell them out to Pan (if he was actually looking for them; Emma wasn’t willing to bet that he didn’t want the heart of the truest believer anymore). _I’m starting to think that neither Regina nor I considered all the_ options _before we left._

Hook instead spent breakfast familiarizing himself with the cell phone.

The mundaneness wore off a little after breakfast; breaking into the apartment of a moody bounty hunter had that effect.

Emma had both Hook and Henry stand lookout at the door while she picked the lock.

“Not that I don’t find this attractive, love, but aren’t you worried about curious neighbors who may call the police upon seeing a woman breaking into an apartment?” _Yes, that’s why you and Henry are blocking their view._

“I’m not breaking in, I’m… knocking creatively,” she told him as she got the lock to turn and opened the door. She stationed Hook at the end of the hallway and Henry at the door while she entered the apartment. If Kyrie was there (probably not, Emma had done some actual knocking first), it would be best if she saw that Emma was the unaccompanied when she broke in.

“Hey kid, what are you doing there?” The unfamiliar voice of a man sounded just outside the door.

“Waiting,” Henry answered in a tone of voice that was neither friendly nor unpleasant.

“Waiting for who?” Emma imagined that the guy was narrowing his eyes in suspicion.

“My mom,” Henry still had that matter-of-fact tone.

“Where’s your mom?” Emma heard Hook’s unmistakable footsteps walking towards them as the unfortunately observant person continued to question Henry.

“Visiting a friend.” _Bless that Henry. Don’t give out more information than necessary when trying to avoid suspicion. Did_ I _teach him that?_

“Like hell, the woman in that apartment doesn’t have friends.” _Busted_. “Who’s your mom?”

“Which one?” Emma barely kept from laughing. Henry not giving useful answers could easily be attributed to the obstinacy and defiance of an adolescent. He had also managed to not lie, mostly. ‘Visiting a friend’ was slightly inaccurate, but the best description of what she was doing other than ‘breaking into an apartment to find a former colleague’.

“I’m calling the police now.” She imagined that the eyes of suspicion had turned into eyes of annoyance by this point.

“I’m sure that’s not necessary,” Hook finally entered the conversation. Emma grabbed the spare key that she knew Kyrie kept taped to the bottom of her kitchen trash can and stepped outside, locking the door very obviously with the key.

“Alright she’s not here; we should have time to set up for the party before she gets home, hello.” She added to the stranger who had been questioning her son and was currently eyeing Hook (and his outfit) with trepidation. “Let’s go get the decorations.”

“Who are you?” _Yep, suspicion and annoyance._

“I’m Emma; I’m a friend of Kyrie’s.”

“Kyrie doesn’t have friends. What are you doing breaking into her apartment?” Emma sized the guy up as inconspicuously as possible. He apparently lived across the hall, as that door was cracked. He was tall, but lanky. Almost certainly not a physical threat. _But it doesn’t take muscles to press three numbers on a phone._

“I have a key,” Emma protested, displaying it for him and sidestepping the friend thing. “We’re throwing her a surprise costume party to celebrate a big catch she made.”

“Kyrie hasn’t been here in months.” _That’s unfortunate in more ways than one._

“I know, she was chasing someone. Like I said, party to celebrate. She said she’d be home at eight, but she didn’t specify AM or PM. Lucky for us, it wasn’t AM. Actually, guys, why don’t we figure out where everything will go before we bring it up? Otherwise I’m sure we’ll just end up bringing a lot of it back down.” She unlocked the door again and gestured inside.

“Costume party, huh?” The annoying stranger was still skeptical. _I both applaud and growl in frustration at your lack of naivety and trustfulness._ “What are you supposed to be?” The neighbor asked Hook as he passed by Emma.

Hook looked at the guy like he was an idiot. “Pirate,” he said simply as he crossed through the doorway.

“Like I said, party about eight tonight. The more the merrier!” Emma said cheerfully as she shut the door in the stranger’s face. She threw the deadbolt and put her back against the door for a moment, looking at Henry and Hook. “Good work,” she said, ruffling Henry’s hair.

“I agree. You excel at withholding information,” Hook added with a smile. “It would appear this colleague of yours moved months ago.”

“No, her stuff is all here. She might actually be on a job; she’s been gone longer before.” Emma could understand Hook’s inference. Emma’s apartment in Boston had been pretty bare. Just a place to sleep, as Mary Margaret had put it. Kyrie’s apartment made that one look outrageously decorated in comparison. The bedroom had a bed, a nightstand with a lamp, and a bookshelf. The living room had a couch and a TV on a coffee table. The kitchen had cookware and dishes (none left unwashed in the sink, which alone would have been enough to tell Emma that Kyrie was gone) and a small table with two chairs. That was it. No pictures, no throw pillows, not even a rug. With the exception of the overflowing bookshelf, there wasn’t a thing in the apartment that wasn’t needed. Okay, maybe the TV, but Emma was willing to consider that a necessity.

Hook raised an eyebrow at her, and she could tell what he was thinking. His ship was homier than this place.

“I doubt we’ll find anything useful, but let’s take a quick look around.”

Henry went straight for the bookshelf while Emma and Hook looked through cabinets and the closet. They even turned over the mattress. Nada. _Not surprising, I didn’t expect her to leave anything revealing behind._

“I think I have something!” Henry exclaimed. _Or maybe she did… Which my son found… I am simultaneously proud and humbled._

Henry had pulled all the books off the shelf. He pointed at a small cloth bag which was taped to the back of the bottom shelf. He also held up a couple of books. “These were behind everything else.” He handed them to Emma as Hook grabbed the bag.

_These are much more advanced that_ Spelling for Dummies _._ “I think I was right about her knowing something about real magic,” Emma said aloud. “Or, at least she thinks she does.”

“No, I would wager she knows something real,” Hook told them, showing them the contents of the bag. Emma and Henry both held expressions of incomprehension. _Why the grim tone of voice? This is a good thing… Although I have no idea what those are._

“These,” he pointed out a few crystals and herbs “are from the Enchanted Forest.” He indicated a few others, which Emma and Henry were both now able to recognize. “These are from Neverland.”

He didn’t know the origin of the others. Emma supposed they could be from somewhere in this land, she was hardly knowledgeable on all the plants and crystals of her world. They could also be from another land altogether.

“So… She’s been to other lands?” Henry asked.

“Or she knows someone who has,” Emma confirmed. “Put the books back as you found them, as best you can.” She held on to the magic books and the bag, though. They might come in useful. Hook grabbed her arm as she put them in her (thankfully large) purse.

“Not that I’m opposed to stealing, but given what you’ve told me about this Kyrie, I doubt she’ll take the theft of her things lightly.”

“I’m willing to risk it. I’ll leave her a note. She’ll have to find us if she wants them back, so at least it’s more likely she’ll call at some point.” _And hopefully the fact that she ‘dislikes me less than most’ will keep her from maiming me._

Hook still looked as though he didn’t think it was the best idea. _Smart man_.

Emma wrote two notes as Henry put the books back. One she put on the bookshelf where the magic books had been, saying essentially ‘yeah, sorry, needed to borrow these, call me if you want them back’. The other she left in the kitchen by the stove. That held the same ‘call me’ message as the others she would leave around town.

Leaving the apartment as close as possible to how they found it, Emma locked the door behind them as they left. “Alright, decorations time,” she said as loudly as she could without being obvious. She could hear the annoying neighbor breathing behind his door. _You should get your lungs checked, man. That sounds serious._

The upside of that trip, other than finding the magic stuff, was that Henry was nearly cheerful. He had gotten to lie to an adult in order to protect the mission, and he had made the most (only) useful find at the apartment. Emma hoped that the rest of the day, which she knew would probably be very dull for him, wouldn’t crush that.

She left letters at a dozen bars and shops around Boston before they stopped for lunch. She was really enjoying eating copious amounts of restaurant food on Regina’s and Gold’s dime.

“We’ll leave for New York next,” she told them. Much as she hoped that Kyrie would both contact her and be willing to help, she couldn’t count on it. Time to act as though she didn’t exist.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Reviews are candy and constructive criticism is a box of KIND bars (the dark chocolate cherry cashew type, yum).


	6. Green Apple Sour Straws

Henry slept again for most of the ride to New York. _Damn cat_. At least he wasn’t so tired when he was actually awake anymore.

Hook took the opportunity to once again bring up a topic which Emma would rather avoid.

“So, what’s the real reason that you wanted me to come along?” _Life, why must you insist on possibly awkward conversations? Why do you hate me?_

Emma sighed, but decided that it wasn’t worth putting off any longer. “I didn’t think I could do this alone.”

“And yet you brought me rather than Neal.”

Emma pictured banging her head against a very solid wall. Amazingly, it didn’t help.

“I couldn’t trust Neal,” she told him.

“I doubt he would have been foolish enough to show his dislike of magic on such an important endeavor.” She stared straight ahead, not particularly wanting to see Hook’s expressions throughout this conversation.

“Not just with the magic. Neal’s default has always been to run away. Before he set me up to be arrested, we were going to sell the watches and go to Tallahassee. But I had to talk him into even that. He was just going to leave the country… and me.”

“That was a long time ago, love.” _Why does everyone defend Neal to me? Just because it was over a decade ago doesn’t mean it doesn’t matter._

“He didn’t try to find me when the curse was broken, even though he knew exactly where I was. When we were trying to think of ways to escape the curse, all he wanted to do was run… There are other things, too; small things that would probably mean nothing to anyone else. All of it together amounts to me not trusting Neal. With much of anything, really. I feel bad about it, and wish that it wasn’t the case, but it is.”

“But you trust me? The pirate who looks out for himself above all else.” Emma still refused to look at him, but his tone of voice had changed. Skepticism and incredulity mixed in with something that she had trouble identifying.

“Please, we both know you haven’t been that man in a while. And yes, I trust you.”

“Why?” Hook asked. Demanded, really.

“You came back with the bean, you brought us to Neverland, you helped rescue my son, you’ve done a lot of things that had no real benefit for you.”

“I don’t know that I agree with that.” He was quiet, uncharacteristically so. Not that he’d been his usual confident, teasing, innuendo-laden self for this conversation, but this was different.

“Fine, you’ve done a lot of things that had no guaranteed benefit for you and plenty of guaranteed risk.” She dared to glance at him quickly, and found him looking at her intently. “Does it really matter _why_ I trust you?”

“No, I suppose not.” The quiet voice again, only laced with contemplation and maybe a bit of new understanding. He blinked a couple of times and looked forward again. “Do you have a plan for when we get to New York?” _Yes, business, thank you._

“What, my vague ‘ask around’ plan isn’t good enough for you?” Emma asked with a grin.

“I’d be lying if I said I wouldn’t prefer something a little more defined.” Hook too adopted a somewhat playful demeanor.

“First up is tossing Neal’s old place. Tamara hunted people with magic. I’m hoping we’ll get lucky and she was sloppy enough to keep something at the apartment that could point us in the right direction. Maybe someone she had identified but hadn’t been able to get to yet, or someone who was feeding her information.” The look Hook was giving her very clearly said ‘do you really think that’ll happen?’ _Only in old-timey words with a delicious accent…_

“Do you really believe that will be the case?” _Eh, close enough._

“Long shot, I know. At the very least we’ll be able to settle in there and avoid shelling out for a hotel room for however long we’re in the city.”

“And beyond that?”

“Go through the book and potion instructions that Regina gave us and start finding whatever ingredients we don’t already have. Might as well get a jumpstart on that.” Hook nodded, apparently satisfied with this still vague plan. _Not like I have a list of doors to knock on. Where in the Yellow Pages would one even look for ‘users of real magic’?_

They rode in comfortable silence (occasionally interrupted by Emma’s insistence on flipping through radio stations) for a time before she thought to ask about something which had been bothering her.

“You know that thing I have where I know when someone is lying?”

“I believe the knife to my throat made that somewhat difficult to forget,” Hook told her.

“How did you lie to me in Neverland? You lied to me about looking for a sextant, and I couldn’t tell.” She divided her glances between him and the road.

“There is a reason I let your father do most of the talking on that one. I’ll admit I was also depending on the intensity of the situation to throw you off your game for the moment.” Her frequent glances at him allowed her to see the wry smile that had formed on his face.

“What?”

“When you trapped me on top of that beanstalk-“

“Are you ever going to let that go?” _Seriously, you trap a guy with a giant on top of a beanstalk_ one time _and you never hear the end of it._

“Are you never again going to mention that you killed a dragon?” Hook lifted an eyebrow at her in amusement. “You said that you couldn’t risk that you were wrong about me, which led me to believe that you had been wrong before. Neverland itself might have played a role in your inability to catch me in the lie as well.”

“Yeah, about Neverland… Why was it always night?”

“The first time I was there, with my brother, there was daylight. Perhaps Pan preferred the darkness and found a way to make it constant. Or perhaps the island was infected by the darkness within him. Who could say for sure?” After a beat he added, “Why do you ask me?”

“Well, you’d spent a lot of time there.” Hook’s face clouded a bit. _Right, must remember not to bring that up._ “And age supposedly begets wisdom, so I thought I’d give it a shot.”

“I see, anything else you would like explained?” The amusement was back, along with his smile. _How I enjoy that smile…_

“I’m sure I’ll think of something later,” she told him with a grin. Not long after that she yawned.

“Getting tired? I’d offer to drive, but I’m afraid the horsepower of this car isn’t the sort with which I am familiar.”

“Funny. Did you spend a lot of time thinking that one up?” Hook’s small smile gave nothing away. “Just a side effect of the monotony of staring at a road for hours.”

“Am I not interesting enough to counteract that effect? I think I should be offended.”

-.*.-.*.-.*.-

Henry woke up a half-hour before they got to Manhattan. He tore into the snacks Emma had purchased in Boston with gusto.

“We’ll get some real food when we get to the city,” Emma told him.

“It’s cool,” he shrugged. “I’m good with chips and sour straws.”

“I’m not.” She’d been daydreaming about a burger for the last thirty miles.

“I’m still eating the sour straws,” Henry told her.

“Mind if I try one of those, mate?” Hook asked. Henry handed him a green apple sour straw, trying to hide a grin.

Emma had to hide one as well. She loved this particular brand because it took the ‘sour’ part ridiculously seriously. Both she and Henry burst out laughing at Hook’s reaction after tasting the candy.

She grabbed the rest of the straw from Hook’s hand and bit off a large piece. “More than you can handle?” She raised an eyebrow and smirked at him.

“It would seem so,” he replied with a smile of his own.

-.*.-.*.-.*.-

After stopping at a restaurant and fulfilling Emma’s burger need they made their way to Neal’s old apartment. _Hopefully his rent is on auto pay or something._

“Henry, don’t forget that your name is Henry Turner now,” Emma reminding him before they got out of the car.

“Got it,” he replied as he jumped out of the backseat.

Emma made sure that the keys still worked before they brought in their bags. _Locks haven’t been changed, that’s a good sign._

Hook looked around the apartment. “Are you sure Tamara lived here as well?” Emma surveyed the apartment. No women’s clothes anywhere, lots of mismatched clutter.

“No, actually, I guess I just assumed.” She sighed. “Great. Well, let’s see if we can find something with her address on it. Another place to add to the break-and-enter list.”

They turned the apartment over. Emma had to appreciate how thoroughly Tamara had protected her identity, annoying as it was. There was exactly one scrap of useful information; a letter which had been sent to Tamara’s address but she had apparently given to Neal.

“Today or tomorrow? There’s, what, four hours until sunset? Breaking and entering is best done in the dead of night when no one’s paying attention or the middle of the day when visitors are least suspicious.”

“I sometimes forget that you were a thief,” Hook told her.

“From thief to bail bondsperson to sheriff. I guess I’ve always had a foot in the criminal world,” she mused.

“Go tomorrow,” Henry suggested. “That way we can get settled in first. Like getting groceries and stuff.”

“And I believe you wanted to take a look through the book Regina gave you.”

Emma sighed. “Tomorrow it is then.”

They made space for their stuff and went for groceries. Emma picked up maps of the city and some blank notebooks. When they got back to the apartment she pulled out the phonebook (which had been repurposed to prop up a short leg of a side table, _does anyone actually use these anymore?_ ) and started making lists.

“What’s this, then?” Hook sat across from her at the table.

“Occult shops, psychics, alternative medicine… anything that could be related to magic in any way.” She stopped to massage a cramp out of her hand. “After Tamara’s place I think we should look at the psychics. Maybe the ones connected to occult shops first. Then maybe some of the homeopathic healers? Or should we talk to all the occult shops first?”

Hook stopped her contemplation by grabbing her hand. “Let’s just start with Tamara’s place. If a search there yields something, the rest may be unnecessary.”

“I can’t just sit around and do nothing until tomorrow, Hook. There’s a town either frozen or cursed, we don’t know which, and we’ve only got four months to fix it.” She felt the pressure to live up to her role as the savior, and he knew it.

“So don’t do nothing, but don’t wear yourself down right now. Why not talk to Henry? You were concerned he would be upset, why not talk to him about how this quest is likely to go?” Hook’s voice was quiet, his eyes sincere. Emma felt like the air was heavy, and decided to lighten things up a bit.

“You just want to get rid of me so you can down some rum, don’t you?” She teased him half-heartedly.

“You wound me, darling. You know that I would offer you some.” He matched her playful tone.

She could tell that he knew what she was doing. _Open book. That’s really inconvenient sometimes… Damn it. I give up._ She stood up and walked around the table, not letting go of his hand. As she sat in the chair beside him she put her left hand to his face. His smiled melted away as he looked in her eyes. She leaned towards him slowly, and he reciprocated. Just before she could kiss him, Henry called out from the bedroom, effectively halting their movement.

“Mom, can we make a pizza?”

She dropped her hand from Hook’s face, and he closed his eyes and pulled away from her.

“Yeah, kid. Do you want the pepperoni or the cheese?” She squeezed his hand once before she stood to turn on the oven.

“Umm… cheese.”

“Coming right up.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Reviews are food, and constructive criticism is devil’s food cake that doesn’t make you sick when you eat five pieces.


	7. Overly Sweet Confection

**Disclaimer** : I don’t own _Once Upon a Time_ or its characters; I only borrow.

Emma woke early. She hadn’t been able to sleep much, anyway. From what she could tell, Hook hadn’t been able to either; she heard him shifting around on the couch a good portion of the night. (Emma and Henry had taken the bed, Henry sleeping on the very edge as far from the window as possible.)

Tiptoeing in the living area so that she wouldn’t wake Hook, she settled in at the table and starting marking addresses on the city maps. She wasn’t looking forward to the likely day when she’d have to expand the search and do this for other major cities.

Apparently she hadn’t been quiet enough, as Hook sat next to her at the table not long after she started. He pulled out a map she had already marked and looked over it.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you,” she apologized.

“Not to worry, I wasn’t sleeping well anyway.”

Emma glanced in at the bed, and Henry just barely avoiding falling off the edge. She sighed internally and decided to bite the bullet. “You know why he does that, don’t you? Why he doesn’t want to be near a window?”

“Pan’s shadow, I would assume,” Hook said. “He would take children from their windows to Neverland.”

Emma put her head in her hands and sighed, wondering how she could’ve missed it.

Hook could see her distress, but didn’t try to fix it. _Good, that’d probably just piss me off right now._

“Why don’t you ready yourself for the day and then wake Henry? We should be able to go to Tamara’s in a few hours without raising too much suspicion, yes?”

“Maybe around ten or so. Most of her neighbors will probably have gone to work already, but not be home on a lunch break.”

Emma decided to make breakfast before she did anything else. Her sweatpants were too comfortable to give up just yet.

“Would you wake up Henry for me?” She looked over at Hook, who was studying the maps again. “The pancakes are almost done.”

“What exactly _is_ a pancake?” He asked as he moved to look over her shoulder.

“Aside from delicious?”

“Yes.”

“… No, that’s pretty much it, just delicious.” She grinned at him, flipping another pancake as she did.

“As you and Henry both enjoy those wretched sour straws, I’m not sure I can take your word for it,” he teased her before going to wake Henry.

She cleared the maps from the table and set out plates and silverware, then added butter and syrup. As Henry and Hook entered the kitchen she brought over the food. In addition to the pancakes she had fried up bacon, scrambled a few eggs, and even cut up some strawberries. _Look at me, being all Suzie Homemaker_.

As they sat down to eat, Emma appreciated the moment. As much as she loved eating at a diner, where she didn’t have to cook (or clean up), she liked the small bit of normalcy that eating in a kitchen brought amidst the quest for magic. _Even with as not domestic as I am, me cooking breakfast for my son and my… friend… is_ much _easier to wrap my head around than voluntarily seeking out something that shouldn’t exist._

“So… delicious? Or was I wrong?” Emma asked Hook after he tried the pancakes.

“I’ll admit that they aren’t as terrible as I feared,” he responded with a smile, which widened when she threw a napkin at him.

“Try them with syrup,” Henry told the pirate.

Hook did try the syrup, but preferred the pancakes without the “overly sweet confection.” Emma couldn’t really blame him; the ‘maple syrup’ was the fake kind that was basically thick liquid sugar.

Henry, on the other hand, poured enough syrup on his plate to prompt Emma to ask him “geez, would you like some pancakes with your syrup?”

“The pancakes are just there to soak up the syrup,” he told her. Since she felt that cupcakes were just a delivery mechanism for frosting, she didn’t argue.

“I’m not carrying you around town when you collapse from your sugar crash,” she warned him.

“Are we going to Tamara’s today?” Henry asked. Emma noted the slight note of worry in his tone. She could hardly forget that Greg and Tamara had been the ones to kidnap Henry and deliver him to Pan.

“Yeah, we’ll go later this morning. You up for playing lookout again?” She hoped that giving him something to do, especially since it was something helpful, would stave off the disappointment for a while.

“Yep!”

Emma glanced at Hook, who had been silent since his dismissal of syrup, and saw a faint smile on his lips as he watched her and her son. It brought about an unfamiliar, though lately somewhat frequent, warm feeling.

“Alright, go get ready while I clean up,” she ordered in a mock serious tone. Hook helped her bring the dishes to the sink, but she sent him away while she did the actual washing. _Just a few more minutes of almost normal_.

-.*.-.*.-.*.-

Tamara’s place was a bust.

They took the subway, since traffic was a mess in the city. As Emma had predicted, Hook barely drew a second glance in his pirate attire.

When they got to the apartment building Emma had Hook and Henry stay outside while she located the actual apartment, which was probably a good idea since the layout was wonky and it took her five minutes to realize that 307 wasn’t on the third floor but on the first floor of a new section of the building. _That’s just ridiculous_.

“Alright, let’s go,” she told her accomplices once she had found the inappropriately located door. She led them through the maze that was the building. Emma had to wonder if Tamara had chosen the building solely for its ability to confuse people who might come asking questions. It certainly would have been effective.

Since there wasn’t an apartment directly across from Tamara’s door, she stationed Henry at the door and Hook down the hall a ways while she picked the lock (creatively knocked) and entered. After making sure that there weren’t any nasty surprises waiting for trespassers, she called Henry and Hook in to help her search for something useful. Henry seemed a bit put out that he hadn’t gotten to lie to protect the mission again.

After nearly three hours of searching, she was forced to conclude that there wasn’t anything that would help them. In fact, she was pretty sure that this was just a cover place; somewhere that Tamara could show Neal and say “see, I have a home.” There were clothes in the closet, a few pieces of jewelry in a box, toiletries in the bathroom, and even pictures on the wall. But there wasn’t a single piece of identifying information, absolutely nothing personal. If you removed just the clothes, toiletries, and jewelry, it could easily be a fully-furnished apartment for rent. There wasn’t even a grocery list or a notepad with reminders. Emma had already looked up Tamara, and this was the only listing for her name. Meaning that it was likely a fake name. Meaning that they had no way to find out if she did indeed have another place somewhere.

“It would appear we need to move on to the psychics,” Hook noted, putting his hand on Emma’s arm in comfort.

“Yeah, on to weeding through fraudulent psychics.”

Henry was similarly disappointed. He’d already been informed that ‘weeding through fraudulent psychics’ would probably involve a lot of him sitting around with nothing to do. _At least we got some books for him._

Before leaving the apartment building Emma pulled her list and the detailed map of this section of the city out of her purse. Locating the blue mark that indicated Tamara’s place, she found the nearest red dot which indicated a psychic affiliated with an occult or alternative religion shop. (Green was for psychics that weren’t associated with anyone else, yellow for shops with no listed psychics or fortune-tellers, and places of alternative medicine were indicated with pink.)

“The nearest one is three blocks west and two blocks north of here,” she told them.

“Lead the way, my lady,” Hook said, opening the apartment door for her.

-.*.-.*.-.*.-

Emma was pretty sure that this psychic was a fake before they even talked to her. She had a room in the back of a bookstore, and Hook started coughing at the incense she burned before they even entered. Emma had Henry sit in a chair just outside, instructing him to scream bloody murder if necessary. Though they hadn’t had even a hint of Pan so far, she was extremely uncomfortable leaving him alone.

“Come in, come in,” the psychic (Miss Belinda, according to the plate on the door) encouraged. “You must be Emma and Killian,” she said with an air that indicated they were supposed to be impressed that she knew their names. _Yes, very impressive, considering I called and made an appointment._

She gestured to chairs across the table from her and, after looking at each other with nearly identical skeptical looks, they sat.

“Now, what do you need from Miss Belinda today?” _Referring to yourself in the third person is a sign of insanity, you know._

“Shouldn’t you know that already?” Hook asked with a raised eyebrow.

“Ah, skeptics, I see.” _Yes, you’re very observant._ “A demonstration, then!”

“And how are you going to make us believe that you’re for real?” Emma asked.

“Well, let’s see…” Miss Belinda waved her hands pretentiously over the cliché of a crystal ball. “Ah, yes. You come to me out of worry.” _No shit, Sherlock._ “You worry for your family, that they are unwell.” She addressed only Hook next. “Despite your differences with your in-laws, you worry for your wife’s family as well. You needn’t, all will right itself in the end.” Hook and Emma looked at each other with barely concealed looks of amusement and disbelief. _If you’re going to be a fraud, at least be thorough. Neither of us is even wearing a wedding ring! Well, okay, Hook has many rings; but my hands are ring-free._

Miss Belinda was perceptive enough to at least pick up on that shared look, and she continued with a change in tactic. “You come to me also about a child, one who is in danger. You worry that your relationship won’t survive this difficult time. You shouldn’t fear, your daughter will be fine, and your love will get you through.” _I’ll give you assuming that Hook and I have a child, given that we both came in with Henry. But he is very clearly_ not _a daughter. You are beyond an idiot._

Emma was barely holding back a smile now. “Do you have any words of wisdom for us before we go, Miss Belinda?”

“Only that you should trust in fate, and everything will sort itself out.”

“We thank you, Miss Belinda,” Hook said as he rose from his chair. He, too, was having trouble with his composure.

Emma placed seventy-five dollars, the fraud’s fee, on the table and addressed the woman. “You were entirely wrong, of course, and your observation skills could use some definite improvement. But thank you for the illuminating experience.”

“How’d it go?” Henry asked them as they left the dimly lit and supposed-to-be-mysterious room.

“One fraud down, lots to go,” Emma told him.

She stopped at the counter long enough to tell the clerk that they should consider getting someone a little less dimwitted to act as a psychic. After she asked if he knew of any healers, shamans, or other people of magic, of course.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Reviews are Jolly Ranchers, and constructive criticism is the cherry flavor! And now I really want Jolly Ranchers… damn.


	8. It's Whipped!

“Why don’t you just ask them if they’re fake and see if they lie to you?” Henry asked as they got back to Neal’s apartment.

They had seen four other psychics after Miss Belinda and each had, unsurprisingly, been fake. Though none were nearly as incompetent as that first one.

“That would make things go a mite quicker, love.” Hook spread out on the couch. He hadn’t even bothered going in with her to see the last two.

“I can’t be sure that whatever was throwing me off in Neverland isn’t still around. If it _was_ just the stress of the situation… Well, I think this qualifies as a stressful situation,” she explained, plopping down next to Hook.

“So we’ll test it. I’ll tell you stuff, and you tell me what’s a lie.”

“That’s sweet, Kid,” Emma sighed. “Unfortunately, I pretty much know what your lies would be already.”

“When you and Killian were at the second place I snuck outside and got a hotdog,” he said casually.

“You did what? Henry, we don’t know if Pan could be following us, you can’t just go off on your own like that!”

“That was a lie.”

Hook chuckled. _Jackass_. “Perhaps it is the stress then.”

Emma huffed. “It doesn’t really matter what it is; the point is that my lie detector is on the fritz and I can’t count on it.” Henry was busy digging in the freezer. “What are you looking for, Henry?”

“Pizza,” he answered, pulling one out of the freezer and turning on the oven.

“We had pizza last night.”

“I know.”

“How about if I make chicken or something instead? Maybe some vegetables, something with nutritional value?”

“Mom, I’ve been sitting in rooms full of bad-smelling smoke all day. I’m having pizza.” He cut through the plastic wrap and ate a frozen pepperoni from the top. “Besides, tomato sauce is a vegetable, everyone knows that.”

Hook looked amused at the exchange but didn’t say anything about dinner one way or another. “Will we see more charlatans tomorrow, or would you like to try some of the others?”

“More of the charlatans, I think. We should probably start gathering ingredients for the potions, too. I think I want to start on some of the faith healers next week; there aren’t nearly as many as there are supposed psychics, so we should be able to knock them out in just two or three days.” Emma stood and stretched (she didn’t miss the way Hook’s eyes traveled over her as she did so) before moving to put the pizza in the oven when it was preheated.

“Mom, I can make a pizza,” Henry told her, disgruntled.

“Yeah, I know. If you’re not going to let me be all motherly and make something nutritional, then I’m going to be all motherly and pretend to have a hand in something delicious but worthless.” _Speaking of which…_ She pulled out a jar of frosting she’d had the foresight to buy and cracked it open. “Want some?” She offered a spoon to both Henry (who declined and went to read on the bed, still annoyed) and Hook (who accepted but then wondered how she could eat such a thing without getting sick). “It’s whipped!”

_Poor choice of words_. Hook had that smirk that usually accompanied some sort of innuendo. “It’s not as heavy as regular frosting… And it’s vanilla, not chocolate.”

“And that makes it better?”

“No, but I can pretend.” She sat at the table with her jar of frosting and looked over the maps and lists. She circled a half-dozen names on one of the lists and pulled one map apart from the rest. “Do you want to come with me to inspect all the _charlatans_ tomorrow?”

“Of course, love.” _When did he get to be sitting next to me?_ He brushed her hair behind her shoulders. “How else will I find out when we can expect our windfall?”

Emma laughed. The third psychic had determined that they were worried about money, but they would have a change in fortune soon. Then Emma paid with a crisp hundred dollar bill and the psychic stopped talking.

“Let’s see, what did we learn today? Apparently we’re married, Henry is a girl, we’re broke, you’re deathly ill-“ at the fourth place Hook hadn’t been able to stop coughing and sneezing, the incense smoke was so thick “-but will miraculously pull through, and we should invest in a company that is researching vehicles run on alternative fuels.”

“What did that last one tell you?” Hook had still been recovering from the choking from the place before.

“Hmm... More of the same, mostly: money, love, family, yadda yadda. I think they all need new handbooks.” That last one had actually been very perceptive. The psychic (Lady Inandra, _how do they pick their names?_ ) had noticed Emma’s quick, corner-of-the-eye glance at Hook and Henry before the door to the ‘reading room’ closed. She had then proceeded to tell Emma that she shouldn’t worry about her love and her son getting along… And that Hook would certainly leave his leather fetish behind eventually (that one had come about when Emma feigned concern over his chosen attire).

“Do people of this land actually go to these ‘psychics’ for advice? It’s easy to see that they are fraudulent.”

Emma took another bite of her frosting and waved the spoon around. “They want something to believe in, I guess. Or maybe they want to have someone else make decisions for them? At the very least they’ll have someone to blame when things go wrong after they take the obviously bad advice.” She put on an angry-face and spoke with a fake voice. “You told me if I sold everything and moved to Hollywood I’d be a famous movie star! You _lied to me_!”

“Very dramatic, love. I think you missed your calling,” Hook told her with a smile.

“Nah, I never wanted to be an actress. Doesn’t do for a thief to have her face on a whole bunch of screens.” She grinned at him and took another bite of her frosting.

“What would you have been, if not a bail bondsperson?”

“I don’t really know. I never thought much about it. I just found something legitimate to do with the skills I already had… Maybe work for an insurance company as a retrieval specialist?” The buzzer on the oven went off and she stood to take the pizza out.

“What’s that?”

“A thief who steals stuff back for the owner. That might have been a harder job to get with a criminal record, though.” She looked over the counter and in several drawers before calling out to Henry. “Henry, where did you put the pizza cutter?”

“I don’t know, you’re the one who washed it.” _Yep, still cranky._

Hook opened the cupboard with spices. _How does he manage to get so close without me noticing?_ He pulled the pizza cutter from behind the salt.

“What was it doing in there?” She accepted the slicer, clearly puzzled.

“I wondered the same thing when you put it there last night.”

“And you didn’t say anything?”

“For all I knew there was a logical reason for the placement.” Hook had that teasing tone of voice again.

“I guess I was preoccupied.” That was an understatement; she’d still been thinking about almost their almost kiss. She cleared her throat and pulled out some plates. “Henry, pizza’s ready!”

-.*.-.*.-.*.-

The rest of the evening was spent quietly. Emma made appointments for the next day with some of the psychics; the others didn’t require them. Henry got over his annoyance at being denied the great honor of putting a pizza in the oven enough to look through Regina’s _Spelling for Dummies_ (the book didn’t actually have a title, but that’s how Emma was thinking of it) with Emma. It was actually kind of interesting, though she didn’t think it would be of much help if they couldn’t find someone who wielded magic. Hook compiled a list of the ingredients they needed to find. Emma also did some searches on her laptop for worldwide incidences that could be attributed to magic; a few miraculous recoveries and a couple of disasters narrowly averted made the list, but she wasn’t optimistic.

Despite not having found someone to help (she had been certain that they wouldn’t so quickly), Emma still felt as though they had accomplished something by the time they went to bed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Reviews are pizza and constructive criticism is Pizza Hut Thin Crust with pepperoni, black olives, and pineapple!


	9. At a Loss for Words

They’d been in New York for just two weeks, but they’d already settled into a routine. Emma woke first (though Hook was never far behind) and made breakfast before waking Henry up. Maybe an hour later, after everyone was ready for the day, Emma would stuff the list and appropriate map for that day into her purse along with a book or two for Henry (mostly comics now, sorry, _graphic novels_ ), and they would head out. They visited psychics (so far all frauds, though some were more amusingly/frustratingly moronic than others), occult shops, herbalists (they still needed ingredients), alternative medicine specialists, and a few people that Emma had been referred to by the others (usually the clerk or owner at one of the shops). They’d stop at one of the food carts for lunch; Emma and Henry had enjoyed exposing Hook to Chinese, Thai, and various other varieties of cuisine (including hotdogs and roadside pizza).

They’d get back to the apartment eight or ten hours after they left (sometimes longer), they would have dinner (usually something frozen; lasagna and pizza were common) and then they’d get back to work. Hook and Emma would select more people and places from the list; Emma had noted which people required appointments and had made them all their fourth day there, so they built their daily lists around those. They’d mark the map, and then Henry would plot out the order (and sometimes subway course) in which they’d go to each one while Emma did more research online. After Henry was asleep Hook and Emma would talk, sometimes about their mission (Operation Seahorse), and sometimes about anything else.

The two week mark was a particularly bad day. They visited five psychics, three shops, and someone who claimed to be a druid; none had panned out, and Emma had nearly gone off on the ‘druid’ when he turned out to be versed in herb lore but absolutely nothing else that he had claimed. Henry had just fallen asleep and Hook had stretched out on the couch watching TV (he had taken a liking to the _Animal Planet, Discovery,_ and _History_ channels) when she finally let it out. He turned off the TV (some documentary on how much of the Robin Hood story was based in truth, heh) and turned to listen when she started pacing.

She really did let it _all_ out; the frustration at their utter lack of progress other than locating _one_ of the ingredients, her anger that she had to do this (volunteer or not be damned), her worry for both Henry’s safety and her relationship with him (he often got frustrated that he wasn’t allowed to do more, though he rarely said anything about it), and more than a few other things.

“I mean, why do people enable these _charlatans_ (she now both loved and loathed that word, it was so applicable) to stay in business at all?! And the shop owners! Sometimes they’re even worse! They’ll point to a book or two and ask if perhaps we’d like to buy some crystals or incense or herbal tea and can’t give us any real information at all!” She finally took a breath. “Why did I volunteer for this?”

“Because you’re the only one who can,” Hook reminded her.

“No I’m not! Regina or Gold could’ve crossed the town lines without losing their memories. Okay, Regina had to stay to put up the barrier, if that even worked, but Gold could’ve gone! But no, I had to volunteer, and drag you into it, and agree to bring Henry along even though I knew it probably wouldn’t be anything but boring for him…”

“Come here love.” Hook beckoned her over and gestured for her to sit by him (on his lap, basically). She gave him a look that obviously said _yeah, right._ “I’ll be a perfect gentleman,” he promised while he grabbing her hand and dragging her on to the couch, pulling her to lean against his chest.

“You volunteered for this because you’re this only one that could be trusted to get it done, and you know it. You know this world, and you want to save Storybrooke rather than just yourself. You have many useful skills, and I’m not just talking about your ‘creative knocking,’ as you call it.”

He wrapped his left arm around her stomach and she relaxed into him.

“You didn’t _drag_ me into this. If I didn’t want to be here I would’ve declined your invitation. You brought Henry because every other option was even more dangerous for him. No one objected to you going because they knew you were their best chance.”

“Or they just weren’t crazy enough to want to do it.”

“Let me finish.” He began to stroke her hair. “You will do this. _We_ will do this. Henry will be safe, the town will be saved; you’ll save them once again.”

“I don’t care about any prophecies. I’m not a savior, I don’t _want_ to be.” _Great, now I’m whining like a five year old._

“I don’t believe in you because you’re the savior. You’re Emma Swan. You’re an incredibly frustrating, sometimes infuriating, stubborn, marvelous woman who will do whatever it takes to succeed. And I’ve yet to see you fail.” His voice was soft. Yes, they had been quiet (even during her rant) to keep from waking Henry, but his voice was _soft_ , and _sincere_.

She craned her neck to look him in the eye, ready to protest that she’d hadn’t been able to stop Henry from ripping out his own heart and that Regina was the one who had gotten Pandora’s Box (with Gold still inside) back from Pan. She couldn’t get the words out. When she looked in his eyes she saw something she could hardly identify. An unshakable belief in her. Her parents believed in her because she was their daughter and their savior. Henry believed in her because she was his mom. The townspeople believed in her because, well, they didn’t really have another option if they wanted to keep hope. But here was Hook, believing in her despite the fact that she had trapped him with a giant up a beanstalk ( _okay, I guess even_ I _haven’t really let that go_ ), knocked him out with a compass, and walked away from him more times than she wanted to count.

“Hook,” Emma whispered. She didn’t even know what she could say to him aside from ‘thank you’, only that she needed to say something.

He gave her an almost sad smile at that. “I thought you were supposed to call me Killian, darling,” he reminded her before she could go on. _Good, because I still don’t know what I can say to him._

“We’re not in public,” she pointed out. He still had that sad smile, like he thought that… Well, she wasn’t sure what he thought. “Does it really matter, though? A name is just a name.”

“To start, the moniker doesn’t very well fit now, does it?” He forced the joke, waving the arm with the prosthetic hand around to make his point. He was quiet for a minute before he continued. “Hook is a pirate obsessed with his revenge, not caring how he gets it or who it hurts, willing to go through anyone who gets in his way. I can’t be that pirate anymore.” He brushed a lock of hair behind her ear. “You know, I think you might have liked Killian Jones, he-“

Emma cut him off. She was even more at a loss for words than before, so she kissed him. And he responded, wrapping his hand in her hair, pulling her close to him and shifting their bodies so that there was hardly room for air between them.

Unlike their kiss in Neverland, which she had started in response to his challenge (not expecting it to turn into more for either of them, though it had), this was slow and tender and sweet. It was full of gratitude; that he was there, that he believed in her, that he was good to Henry, that he was good to her, and most of all that he had proven that she could trust him. And also that he didn’t push her for more. Not that she didn’t _want_ more (because _man, he’s a great kisser_ ), but she wasn’t ready. Because Henry might still be in danger, and the town wasn’t safe, and this damn pirate had wiggled his way into her life and her heart when she wasn’t ready to risk that hurt again.

He only pulled away when she did. ( _what was that? Minutes? Hours?_ She couldn’t even tell.) And when she rested her forehead against his and murmured “Killian,” he smiled. Then she yawned right in his face and he laughed. She had to laugh a little herself before she apologized.

Emma laid down, on top of him now on the couch, and rested her chin on his chest as she looked at him. “I haven’t thought of you as that pirate in a while. The description you give ‘Hook’, I mean,” she told him as she reached for his hand and laced her fingers in his.

“I’m glad,” Hook _(no, Killian)_ replied. “You should get some rest, love.”

She _hmm’d_ in agreement but didn’t move other than to lay her head down on his chest. “Can I stay here for just another minute?”

“Of course, love. For as long as you’d like.”

-.*.-.*.-.*.-

Henry woke up before either of them in the morning. He let them sleep and made their breakfast himself (it consisted of oatmeal and Captain Crunch). If he thought anything strange or wrong about finding his mom and Killian snuggled together on the couch fast asleep, still holding hands, he didn’t mention it when he prodded them awake.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Reviews are breakfast cereal and constructive criticism is Peanut Butter Captain Crunch!


	10. Two Out of Three

For the week after _The Kiss_ , as she was now thinking of it, Emma finally got around to taking care of the basic living stuff that she had been neglecting. After some creative truth-telling on Henry’s part (and some lying on Emma’s) she got Neal’s landlord to reveal that the rent was indeed on some sort of auto-pay. It was much easier to find out that the cable and electricity bills were as well. _Must remember to pay him back later._ She also bought some pre-paid debit cards so that they wouldn’t have to keep carrying around large wads of cash.

She and Henry convinced Killian to buy some modern clothes because he was starting to draw attention (mostly from the neighbors who saw him frequently enough to realize he probably wasn’t going to a costume party every day). He still usually wore his boots and leather pants ( _yummy_ ), but he agreed to wear the t-shirts and new leather jacket that they had picked for him.

Emma and Henry spent a full two days overloading Killian with information about their world. Despite only being in this land (and outside of Storybrooke) for a few weeks, he had actually adapted quite well. In addition to his agreement to wear something other than his full pirate garb (though the earring, rings, and eyeliner had also stayed) he had taken to doing much of the grocery shopping while Emma did her online research (the internet was something he hadn’t bothered with yet). He watched TV (‘bloody waste of time’ though it was) and even made dinner every now and again. She wasn’t terribly surprised that he knew how to cook, having been a solitary creature for some time, but for some reason it still amused her to see him in the kitchen; especially if he was microwaving something (that had taken a while to get. His first attempt had resulted in extremely overcooked food and his second involved a lot of sparks and smoke because Emma hadn’t specified that warming up soup meant taking it out of the can first).

-.*.-.*.-.*.-

Three weeks in, a thudding sound could be heard throughout the apartment. With each thud Emma thought _idiot._

“Mom, if you keep banging your head against the table you’re going to dent it.”

“The table or my head?” She asked without ceasing her self-berating. _Idiot, idiot, idiot._

“Both.”

Emma allowed herself two more thuds before lifting her head off the table. _You know, I used to scoff at people who pulled out their smartphones to look up an address when there was a phonebook right there._

“Why so glum, love?” Killian asked as he entered the apartment with several bags of groceries. She took a second to appreciate the view (his t-shirt was _very_ form-fitting) before letting her head fall against the table again. “I used to find people for a living! You know how I often did that? I used the internet! Have I done _one_ search on psychics, seers, or anything of the kind in this city? No!” She had realized this right when she woke up and immediately did a search. She wouldn’t be so upset with herself if she hadn’t found six additions for their list. (People who advertised online only were a pain in the ass.) One was an ‘alternative medical remedies specialist’ whose website consisted only of hours and a phone number to make an appointment; this was the main reason she was denting her forehead. She had done more research on the guy and found review sites and blogs that sung his praises.

“ _Six_ more that we could’ve looked into by now. _Six_!”

“Isn’t that the purpose of this large book with miniscule print?” Emma glared at Killian, who was holding up the phonebook ( _you know damn well what that’s called, jackass_ ) while trying, unsuccessfully, to keep a look of amusement off of his face.

“Ugh!” She got up from the table and threw herself onto the bed, facedown, and covered her head with a pillow. Killian and Henry exchanged a look, then played _rock, paper, scissors_ (which Henry had introduced the pirate to during a particularly long wait for a faith healer). Henry won.

‘Two out of three?’ Killian mouthed. Henry rolled his eyes but agreed, then grinned when he won again. He mouthed back ‘coward’ when Killian suggested ‘three of five?’

Killian sighed. “Put away the groceries, then,” he told the boy before making his way to Emma. He laid next to her and pulled the pillow from her head. “Emma?”

“I’m a moron,” she stated into the mattress.

“No, you’re stressed.”

“I’m stressed because I’m a moron.”

“No, you’re a moron because you’re stressed.” That earned him another glare. “That didn’t come out right.”

“I would hope not,” she told him with narrowed eyes. Then she shoved her face back into the mattress.

“You’re going to suffocate, love.” When Killian didn’t get a response he sighed again and started rubbing small circles on her back. After he felt some of the tension leave her body he tried again. Well, he tried to try again; before he could do more than open his mouth she flipped over and looked at him.

“Three weeks,” she said, as if that explained everything.

“I’m sorry?”

“Three weeks. That’s how long it will take to get in to see that ‘alternative medical remedies’ guy. If I had bothered to look things up when we got here, we might already be done with him! And we’d probably be done with everyone else next week, so we could move on if we needed too, but now we’re here for another _three weeks_ at least. That would mean we’ve been here a month and a half. Which would give us two and a half left before the shield sends everyone back, _if_ the shield even held. And we need a month to make the potion. So, after seeing this guy we’ll have only a month and a half left to find someone if he, or the others we still need to see, isn’t legit. A _month and a half_!” Yeah, she was probably close to being hysterical at this point. _Stop smiling, jackass_. “This isn’t funny!”

“I never said it was.” He kissed her forehead. “Though you are beautiful when you get worked up.”

Emma scowled at him. “I haven’t forgotten about the moron remark.”

“You said it first. Dinner will be ready in twenty minutes, if you’d care to interrupt your wallowing to join us.” Emma flipped back over and muffled a frustrated yell with a pillow. Killian shrugged at Henry when he entered the kitchen area.

Maybe a minute later they heard a muffled “what’s for dinner?”

Much as she appreciated the camaraderie that Killian and Henry were building, she really didn’t like it when they ganged up on her. As she picked at her spaghetti Killian pointed out that they still had plenty of other people to check out, as well as ingredients to procure (three of them were proving to be particularly difficult to find). Henry said a couple of things to try and cheer her up (it didn’t work) then sternly told her that she had another hour to be ridiculous and then she had to act like a grown-up.

_When did my son start scolding me on irrational behavior? I didn’t think that’d start until I hit my mid-life crisis years._

Beyond reminding her of the things that they still needed to do (which very well might take three weeks, though she certainly wasn’t going to admit that out loud), Killian didn’t try to cheer her up or curb her impractical behavior (because when does having an _I’m an idiot and therefore must do nothing but lament my idiocy_ party actually accomplish anything?), only brushed her hair back when it came perilously close to dipping in her spaghetti sauce.

Emma didn’t allow herself the full hour, instead silently soothing her wounded pride while she finished eating.

Henry and Killian had a heated discussion over some TV show they had watched that morning while she’d made breakfast.

Emma tuned in to their discussion after her pity party was over. “How could painting a hole on the side of a mountain create a tunnel for one creature, but not another, without the use of magic?”

“Killian, it’s a _cartoon_. It’s not supposed to make sense. It’s just supposed to be funny.”

“A coyote repeatedly trying to murder a road runner is an acceptable form of children’s entertainment?”

“Yes. Shut up and eat.”

Emma held back her laugh. After they all finished eating she took over kitchen duty to do the dishes (Killian put them away as she dried them) and Henry spread out on the couch to watch TV.

Killian touched her shoulder. “Doing better now, love?”

“Yeah. Sorry I’ve been so melodramatic. A mixture of stress and hurt pride, I guess.” She gave him a sheepish look in recognition of her _melodrama_.

“Have you found something to fill the time you were so worried about?”

“I’ll do more digging online and make some calls about those last ingredients. Then I’m going to start making up lists on other cities we might need to visit.”

“Where would we go after here?” He followed her to the table and helped her finish clearing it off and setting back up the maps.

“New Orleans, maybe? Probably a whole bunch more charlatans to weed through, but maybe some of the Voodoo practitioners can point us in the right direction.”

“What is Voodoo?”

“It’s a religion which incorporates magic. Spells as prayers, that sort of thing. I think, anyway. I don’t actually know all that much about it. I guess that goes on the ‘to research list’ as well.” Emma flipped to a new page in the notebook she was using and wrote To Research across the top. _Might as well add it to an actual list, rather than just my mental one._

“So we’ll drive to this New Orleans if we can’t find everything we need here.

“We’d take an airplane, actually. Since I’m the only one who knows how to drive it’d probably be a two day trip just to get there.” She was sort of excited to see how Killian would react to a plane. _Then again, he has traveled across realms through portals in his pirate ship, so maybe he wouldn’t see intentionally taking to the sky in a large metal tube as a big deal._

“I captain a pirate ship, love. I’m sure I’d be able to handle your car.” _Yeah, yeah._

“Yeah, not happening.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Reviews are fruit and constructive criticism is a giant bowl of in-season raspberries and strawberries (with whipped cream on the side for dipping, of course).


	11. Is it That Bad?

“Well, that’s the last of the so called ‘psychics’,” Emma said as they left the last shop on the list.

“We have an hour before our last appointment,” Henry told them. “Can we get lunch first? I’m hungry.”

“How about if we grab a slice on the way? I’d like to walk, if that’s okay with you two. I’ve already had too much of sitting around today to want to take the subway or bus.”

“That’s fine with me, love.” Killian had also complained of the sitting. Weeks of sitting around listening to absurd comments and predictions from charlatans, weeks of sitting around the apartment making phone calls and looking at maps, weeks without a single life-or-death situation. For her part, Emma vastly preferred the lack of danger. _But I’m pretty sure my ass has gone flat from all the damn sitting._

Since Henry also agreed they stopped in at a pizza parlor and ate their lunch while they walked. Unfortunately, they made it to the office of the ‘alternative medical remedies specialist’ a full half-hour before their scheduled appointment.

“Okay, what was our story for this one again?” Henry asked when they reached the door. They chose a different ailment and took turns playing patient for each of the ‘healers’ that they saw.

Emma sighed. “I can’t even remember. Whose turn is it to be the faker?”

“Killian’s.”

“Wonderful, and what shall I be afflicted with today?” Killian didn’t enjoy playing patient. None of them did really, but he had a particular aversion to it.

“Migraines?” Emma offered.

“Seizures?” Henry threw out.

“I’m not faking a bloody seizure.”

“I vote migraines. You’ve had enough headaches lately that you’ll hardly have to pretend,” Emma pointed out. It was true; the incense smoke that many of the psychics seemed to think was necessary to maintain their mystique almost always gave him a headache.

“Right you are. Migraines it is, then,” Killian agreed as he opened the door and gestured for them to enter first.

Emma approached the reception desk. “Hi, we have an appointment at two o’clock, I know we’re early.”

“Can you confirm the name you made the appointment under?” The receptionist, a woman that Emma was pretty sure wasn’t old enough to go to a bar (and had red and purple streaks in her dark hair, reminding Emma painfully of Ruby), pulled out a large datebook and looked at Emma expectantly.

“My name is Emma Turner, but the appointment is for Killian James.” She indicated Killian, who was looking around the reception area with Henry. It wasn’t like most of the other places they had visited; it lacked the supposedly soothing music (which had always grated Emma’s nerves even before she was forced to listen to it multiple times weekly), nature sounds, scent of essential oils, and all the other things that many ‘healers’ had put out to encourage people to be calm and pliable. _Because essential oils and annoying music apparently make people gullible. They see what they expect, I guess. This looks more like an actual doctor’s office. Only without the outdated magazines and overwhelming smell of disinfectant._

“Yes, I have you here, you called three weeks ago?” At Emma’s nod the receptionist (her nameplate read “Divina” _Really? Is that supposed to be mysterious?_ ) brightened up. “I’m glad we could get you in for a consultation so quickly!”

“Three weeks is quick?”

“Yes, Kyle only does initial consultations twice a week, since he never knows how long the first one might take. We’re usually booked months out for new patients, but we’d just had a cancellation when you called.” Emma didn’t miss Killian’s pointed glance at that. _I already admitted I was being melodramatic and ridiculous, no need to rub it in._

“Why don’t you take a seat? I’ll let the doctor know you’re here. One of his patients went into a difficult labor this morning, but he called a bit ago to let me know he’ll be on time.” The girl swiftly sent a text message and received a reply almost immediately. “Yep, he’s already getting cleaned up and will be here shortly. I need to run out and grab something for the office before he gets here, will you be alright on your own for a few minutes?” Without waiting for a reply she locked the appointment book away in a cabinet and grabbed her purse.

“Yeah, we’ll be fine.” _This is different…_

“Great! I’ll be back in just a minute. Feel free to snoop! Just don’t break into anything,” Divina tossed over her shoulder as she left the office.

Emma, Henry, and Killian looked at each other in silence for a minute.

“This is a different kettle of fish from what we’ve dealt with to date,” Killian commented.

“Yeah, this place is weirdly normal,” Henry added. He seemed to have taken Divina’s words about snooping to heart, as he immediately started poking around. Emma joined him as he looked behind the reception desk.

“The weird part is right at least. There’s no computer.” _Huh, she must keep everything in that cabinet._ Aside from some standard office supplies the desk held what looked like Divina’s personal stuff. A couple of classic novels and a few textbooks with corresponding labeled binders. _Biology, chemistry, calculus… The world religions book is the only thing that comes close to fitting the alternative medicine stereotype_.

They only spent a few minutes snooping. There wasn’t all that much to see. And besides, it had grown insanely hot before even ten minutes had passed. Emma estimated that it was at least eighty-five degrees, which was abnormal not only for indoors but also for late fall in New York. _Is this some sort of strategy? Get people delirious from heat stroke and they’ll believe you when you tell them that they have some sort of infection of the aura?_

“This reminds me of that healer we saw last month. The one who worked out of a sauna?” Henry told them, looking up briefly from the comic book he had sat down to read.

Emma snorted even as she peeled her shirt away from her sweaty skin. _Seriously? It should not have gotten this hot, this fast._ “Ah yes, the purging of impurities through the pores.”

Killian was pacing, which probably wasn’t helping with the overheating thing. “Never mind impurities, I’m sweating my dignity off.”

“Not to mention your guyliner,” Henry quipped, he voice totally even. Emma could see the tiniest lift at the corners of his lips. She had to press her lips together to hold back her own smile. He looked up from his book with Killian didn’t respond. “You look like a raccoon.”

Killian stopped his pacing. “Is it that bad?” He asked Emma. She laughed outright at his expression of near horror.

“Not quite, but it’s getting there.” She stood and took his face in her hands, wiping under his eyes with her thumbs. “Maybe we should start carrying around makeup removal wipes for you.” His only reply to her teasing smile was a narrowing of the eyes. “You’d think a pirate would use waterproof eyeliner, at least.”

“The general idea is to stay dry by not falling overboard,” he informed her.

Divina chose that moment to reenter the office, kicking the door open. She set the bags she was carrying next to the door and propped it open with a brick. “Gods, I’m so sorry! The thermostat must be broken again.” She pulled a couple of water bottles out of one of the bags and handed them to the group. She selected a contact on her cellphone and argued heatedly with someone Emma assumed was a repairman on the other end as she loaded several more bottles from the bag into a mini-fridge under the desk. “Absolutely unacceptable! You ‘fixed’ it just last week, and it’s already broken again. Either you come back and do the job properly, _for free_ , or you give us a refund for your incompetence! Good, I look forward to seeing you tomorrow morning. Don’t you dare be late.” _I think I like her._

“Divina, what is the fee for this consultation? It wasn’t on your website and I forgot to ask when I called.”

The girl looked surprised when Emma called her by name, then picked up her nameplate and scowled. She pulled a permanent marker from behind the desk and proceeded to blacken out the ‘ina’ portion of her name as she answered Emma. “I’ll have to remember to fix that. Initial consultations are free unless Kyle provides some sort of treatment. He negotiates fees for that beforehand, though.”

“Negotiates? He doesn’t set his prices?” Killian asked, intrigued. Emma was as well; nearly everyone they’d seen before had their fees set in stone. A few had even had spa-like menus of services rendered with prices listed (Chakra realignment: $250, spirit cleansing: $125, various herbal remedies: $15-75, etc.).

“It’s hard to set prices when every treatment is different. It’s not like you can just say ‘here, drink this tea and say this mantra seventeen times daily’. Even people with the same problem might need different treatments. Speaking of problems, what did you need to see the doctor for? I seem to have neglected to ask before.”

“I’ve been experiencing horrendous migraines. I’ve seen several doctors and none have been able to determine a cause,” Killian told her. Divina looked skeptical but pulled out her datebook and wrote something down next to their names.

“Hopefully Kyle will be able to do something more.”

“That’s why we’re here,” he replied. “Divina-“

“Please call me Div.” _A hated name rather than a chosen one, then._

“Div, what kind of remedies does this Kyle provide?”

“Like I said, it depends on the problem. He actually refers a lot of people to medical specialists, especially if they hadn’t seen a doctor yet.”

“You’d think he wouldn’t turn clients away. That’s hardly a way to turn a profit.”

“He doesn’t really _make_ a profit here. That’s what his day job is for.” Div sat down and put her feet up on the desk.

“Day job?” Henry asked.

“At the hospital.”

“You mean he’s an actual doctor?” Even Henry was interested now.

“Yeah, he just finished a residency for internal medicine. He’s being considered for a fellowship for… I can’t remember what. Some diagnostic thing. I think he watched too much _House, M.D._ when he was in med school.” _Well, she is a font of information. I wonder how much more we can get in the next ten minutes._

“I noticed your textbooks earlier. What are you going to school for?” Div turned to look at Emma.

“Snooping, were we?” She smiled though. “Chemistry right now. I’m thinking about joining the pre-med program, but I haven’t decided yet.”

“I’m surprised someone so scientifically inclined would work at a clinic for alternative therapies.”

“My boss is a doctor, and _he_ works at a clinic for alternative therapies.” _Point taken. Not much time left for questions._

Emma decided to just jump right in with what she wanted to know. “Some of the reviews I read online were left by people who seemed to think that your boss worked some kind of magic.” Div was expressionless. “Do you think he works magic?”

“Magic is just science that hasn’t been explained yet. Or maybe science is magic that has been explained. I can never remember.” Still unreadable.

“I’ll rephrase. Do you believe in magic, and do you think your boss has it?”

Div was saved from having to come up with another not-answer by the door opening. “Just in time!” she told her boss.

“Sorry to keep you waiting, emergency caesarians aren’t considerate of appointments.” Emma looked over the doctor/healer/potentially-magic-guy. He was younger than she’d expected, around her age. He was dressed casually, jeans and a sweatshirt. _Good, I’ve had about enough of robes and linen tunics_. She looked over at Killian, who had stilled upon seeing the doctor.

The doctor took a quick look at the appointment book (Emma assumed to check their names and the reason for their visit) and gestured at a door opposite the entrance. “Right this way and we can get started.” He opened the door, revealing a room reminiscent of a physician’s exam room, though less impersonal and far more welcoming.

As Killian and Emma passed Henry she ducked down and whispered “keep asking questions” with a subtle nod at Div.

“What is it?” Emma murmured to Killian as they followed the doctor.

“He looks very familiar,” he told her, his voice also low.

“Bad?” Henry asked from his chair.

“I can’t place it.”

“I guess we’ll find out.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Reviews are apple pie and constructive criticism is cup-pies! (Like cupcakes… only with pie instead of cakes… Totally worth the time it takes to cut out dozens of mini-crusts.)


	12. Drain Cleaner

“Have a seat,” the doctor invited, gesturing to a couple of cushy chairs as he closed the door behind them. As Emma and Killian complied he pulled out a pad of paper and a pen, sat in a chair across from them, and asked “so, what’s the trouble?”

“Well, Dr. Mattison-“

“Please call me Kyle,” the doctor interrupted Killian.

“Well, _Kyle_ , I’ve been having terrible headaches. The doctors I’ve seen can’t find anything wrong.”

“I see… And how long have these been going on?”

“Five or six months,” Killian replied.

Kyle looked from one to the other and then spoke to Emma. “You’ll need to remove any metal that you’re wearing. Any jewelry, clothing with metal buttons or zippers, underwire; there’s a robe behind that screen you can change into.”

Emma and Killian shared a confused look. “Why? We’re not here for me.”

The doctor turned in his chair to toss the notepad and pen onto his desk. “Actually, you’re not here for either of you, but you’re the one who has a problem I might be able to fix.”

“I don’t-“

“If he’s suffering from migraines then I’m a platypus. And since I can’t regrow a hand, there’s absolutely nothing I can help him with.” He kicked his feet up onto the small table between them and leaned back in his chair, the very picture of nonchalance.

“Just what is it you think you can help Emma with?” Killian was shifting somewhat uncomfortably in his chair. Emma could see that his ‘he seems familiar’ expression hadn’t disappeared even a little; if anything, it had increased.

Dr. Kyle addressed Emma. “Something’s blocking off a part of you.”

“I don’t catch your drift.”

“Do you feel like a part of you is missing, that you can’t access it? Maybe an emotion or something you used to be good at but can’t quite do anymore?” Emma shared another looked with Killian. _Yes, but unfortunately, due to that very problem, I have no idea if you’re being honest about anything at all._

“And if there was?”

“Then I _might_ be able to help you get it back.” The doctor seemed satisfied. Smug, almost. Not that he was right, because he was very sure of himself (just short of arrogant, really), but that she was willing to admit it. _That wasn’t an admission. That was a non-answer designed to encourage you to reveal useful information._

“Might?” Killian was interested, despite his unease. Emma was stuck mostly at apprehensive. Not only had this Kyle guy seen right through their story (which no one else had done), he’d pinpointed an actual problem. One that most people probably would scoff at. _Because “my superpower is on the fritz” inspires looks full of “you’re crazy.”_

“There’s only so much that someone like me can do. Like I said, something is blocking it off. Something negative accumulated without having the opportunity to dissipate before even more was piled on. Self-doubt or despair, perhaps? Or maybe just old-fashioned anger or grief? I haven’t seen anything like it, actually. It’s almost like it built up when time stood still.” _Maybe Killian was right about Neverland throwing me off._

“How could you tell something like that? Wait, let me guess; you can see it in my aura?” Uncomfortable with the turn in conversation (no matter that it signaled that the doctor might not be a complete fraud), Emma turned to her old friend, snark.

Doctor Kyle let out an undignified snort. “If you want to call it that, sure.” Emma saw a flash of recognition cross Killian’s face before he smoothed his expression into skeptical interest. Emma was comforted by the way that his body let go of some of the tension it had been holding. _If Killian managed to place the doctor, it wasn’t as a threat._

“And how are you going to fix it? Cleanse her aura, realign her chakra, or just have her bathe in water filled with malodorous herbs?” He might not see the doctor as a threat, but he certainly didn’t seem convinced that Kyle could actually do something to help Emma see through lies again.

“More like run drain cleaner through her ‘aura’.” _I don’t like the sound of that._

“That sounds unpleasant.” Apparently Killian was on the same page as she was.

“It could be.” Kyle displayed a complete lack of concern for the unpleasantness.

“You said there’s only so much someone like you can do. What did you mean by that?” As much as Emma wanted to be back to normal ( _as if knowing when people lie again would make my life normal_ ), she decided to focus on the issue that had brought them here: finding someone with real magic.

“Well, everyone has their limits.”

“No, what did you mean by ‘someone like you’.” _Hey, just because_ I _give non-answers doesn’t mean I’ll accept the same from you, buddy._

“I’d have thought you would’ve figured that out by now.” And the smug was back.

“You have magic,” Killian stated. Not a question, or an uncertainty, a statement. _You go from skeptical to certain because of a drain cleaner metaphor? Really?_

The doctor hemmed in acknowledgement before giving a miniscule nod. “Mine is mostly sight-based.”

“What’s a seer doing practicing alternative medicine?” _More importantly, how can a seer help us save Storybrooke and squash Pan like the cockroach that he is?_

“I said sight-based, not predictive.” Kyle said this as if the distinction between ‘possessor of sight-based magic’ and ‘seer’ should have been perfectly obvious.

“What’s the difference?” Apparently Killian didn’t see the distinction any better than Emma did.

“I can tell a great deal about someone just by looking. For instance, if someone is physically ill I can see where that illness originated and how bad it is. Which is both handy for a doctor and how I know that your ‘friend’ here doesn’t have migraines. If someone is psychologically or… spiritually ill, I can tell that too. By looking at the ‘aura,’ as you put it.” Doctor Kyle was up now and walking around the room gathering objects into a small pile on the table.

“What else?” Emma was wading cautiously into the ‘curious’ pool.

“The foundation of a person, their base personality. The connections between people. Sometimes I can see motivations. A few other things.” He reached behind the screen and tossed a robe Emma’s way.

“Such as?” Like Emma, Killian preferred to have all possible information. Much more difficult to be blindsided that way.

“You have been alive far longer than should be possible. That boy out there has a higher capacity for faith than any priest I’ve ever met. And your two lives are far more interconnected than I think even you realize.” Kyle looked at Emma and gestured pointedly to the screen. She steadfastly ignored him in favor of starting a silent conversation with Killian.

_How could he know that you should be long dead?_

_Perhaps we have stumbled on to the one person in this city who isn’t a charlatan._

_What, just because he knows something that no one could possibly deduce from casual observation?_

Killian raised an eyebrow at her and nodded at the changing screen. She sighed, snatched the robe from the floor (where she had let it fall when it was thrown her way), and went behind the screen to change. _At least the robe is comfy_.

“So, why are you searching for someone with magic?” Kyle asked Killian once she was hidden.

“What makes you thing we’re searching for someone with magic? Perhaps we’re just curious how you live up to your claims.”

“Div slipped me a note. You weren’t very subtle with your questions.” Emma emerged in the robe and had another silent exchange with Killian, this time about the doctor’s trustworthiness.

Killian ended that one with a look that very clearly said ‘do we have a choice?’ She sighed again. _What the hell, might as well just put it all out there._ “We need magic to create potions to save a town full of people from another land. And to make sure that a psychopathic teenager doesn’t get his own little corner of the world to rule over.”

To Emma’s surprise, Kyle didn’t express any shock or even skepticism. “Why don’t you just do it yourself?”

“Like I said, we need _magic_.”

“Which you _have._ You’re full of it…” He looked between Emma and Killian, taking in their expressions (which were along the lines of ‘would we be here if it was that easy?’). “But you’re not trained, are you?”

“I raised a protective barrier once, but that shattered pretty quickly. I’ve lit a couple of fires.” _I also sent a magical shockwave at a bitch who was trying to rip out my heart, but that wasn’t intentional so it doesn’t count._

“Don’t forget about destroying that failsafe, love,” Killian pitched in.

“That was Regina, I just helped.” _So it also doesn’t count._

The doctor was contemplative. _At least he’s not telling us to get lost_. “That’s unfortunate. What are the potions for?”

“Uh… one to be able to move around under a shield where time is frozen. One to return memories taken by a curse. We’re not sure which one we’ll need, so we have to make both. Will you help?”

“No.” Emma wasn’t appreciating the definitiveness.

“Why not?! You have the magic; don’t you care about how many people might get hurt?”

“Of course I do. But even if potions were my thing, which they’re really _not_ , I don’t have the juice for something like that.”

“You’re saying that you’re just not powerful enough?” Killian asked with a raised brow.

“Not at the moment. My… ‘magic reserves’, as one might call them, are depleted right now. It’d take months for me to build up enough to pull something like that off. You, however, have plenty.” The level of calm that Kyle maintained was borderline infuriating for Emma.

“Like you said before: I don’t have the training,” she reminded him through gritted teeth.

“What if I give it to you?”

“What?”

“Well, I can’t give you the magic you need, but I might be able to help you learn how to access yours.” Kyle reclaimed his chair and looked at her seriously.

“How long would that take? Because we don’t have much time left.” _As much as I need to learn how to use my magic, I’d rather figure that out_ after _saving the damn town._

“What do you need it to do?”

“Just… infuse the potions with magic, I guess.” Emma shared another look with Killian. The directions that Regina and Gold had given them weren’t very clear on that point. Presumably because someone with magic would already know what to do with it. “The ingredients all seem to be things we can find here, except for one that we haven’t been able to identify. We just need magic to make it something other than a nasty tea.”

“To get you to access your magic and push it into something else… A month, maybe, if we really go at it.” She was starting to dislike the doctor’s ‘contemplative look’.

Killian grabbed ahold of Emma’s hand to still it. She hadn’t even noticed that she was drumming her fingers (somewhat violently) on the table. “And if you prove to be an inadequate teacher? Then we’ve wasted a month that could have been spent finding someone useful.”

“Hey, it’s up to you. I told you what I can do to help. If you’d rather run around the world looking for someone else with magic, you go right ahead.”

“Do _you_ know of someone else who could help?” _Why didn’t we ask that sooner? Like, as soon as he said he couldn’t do it?_

“The woman who trained _me_ , but it’s beyond unlikely that she’ll do anything unless you’ve exhausted all other options. And I really don’t like bothering her unless it’s absolutely necessary.” The doctor began mixing what Emma assumed were ingredients ( _that looks like pond scum… and that one looks like the kind of sludge by the sewer that you avoid at all costs…_ ) in a container on the table. _Really? Tupperware? Right, not important._

“So, if we do this- if you train me- and I can’t do it in time, she would help?”

“If lives are on the line? Almost certainly.” Emma and Killian shared expressions of _it’s probably our best option_ with each other before they nodded at Kyle. He nodded back to acknowledge their agreement. Then he dumped a packet of sugar in the Tupperware bowl, secured the lid, and shook it fiercely. “Now, about that drain cleaner…”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Reviews are apples, and constructive criticism is Honeycrisps!


	13. Blue Glowing Hands

The “Drain-O for the aura” smelled as bad as it looked, and tasted even worse. Emma imagined that she probably could’ve been fed actual drain cleaner and she wouldn’t have known the difference. Dr. Kyle had spread some of the goop on the back of her neck and the inside of Emma’s hands before telling her to eat the rest. Yes, actually _eat_ it. It had the consistency of slimy peanut butter.

She forced down three huge spoonfuls of the stuff (while the doctor informed them “free of charge, because that’s just the kind of guy I am”) before going into a coughing/gagging/choking fit. Killian reverted to Captain Hook for a moment and shoved the doctor against a wall and held him there by his throat while he delivered some creative threats.

“Killian, it’s fine,” Emma croaked, eyes red and watering. “Someone tell me a lie or something.”

“My favorite superhero is the Green Lantern and my favorite color is peach,” Kyle obliged, speaking around Killian.

Emma waited a moment, thinking, then shook her head. “I can’t tell.”

Killian applied more pressure to the doctor’s throat. “You nearly _killed_ her and it didn’t even work?”

“It might take a day or two to be effective. It’s got a lot of work to do.” Kyle’s voice was strained. _Good, I’m petty enough to be okay with you having a bruised airway right now._

Emma let out a frustrated hrmph. “Whatever. Killian. Let him go.” Once Kyle was free, and massaging his throat, she addressed him. “So, when should we start my training?”

She and the doctor set up a schedule as she wiped off the goop and got dressed.

“Hold on a moment, love. You missed a spot.” Killian stopped her as she was about to open the door. He grabbed a warm damp cloth and rubbed gently at the back of her neck. When he was done he smoothed her hair back over her shoulders. “Alright, then.” He opened the door and gestured for her to go through first.

Emma glanced back at the doctor as she left the room and saw an expression of thoughtful amusement on his face. Killian noticed her glance and looked back himself, then scowled. He shut the door on Kyle’s laugh.

Henry and Divina were laughing about something when they entered the waiting room. Div looked at them with a smile. “Did Kyle get you all sorted out? Do you need to make another appointment?”

“We made arrangements with the doctor already. Ready to go, kid?”

“Yep.” They all said goodbye to Div, and Henry threw a wave her way as they left the office. “You were in there a long time. Can he help?”

“Yes and no,” Emma told him as they headed for the subway station.

“What does that mean?”

“Kyle can’t help with the potions, but he’s going to be giving Emma lessons on using her magic so that she might be able to make them herself,” Killian told the boy.

“You’re going to learn magic?” Henry looked up at his mom, and she saw an odd combination of apprehension and excitement on his face.

“That’s the plan. Did you learn anything useful from Divina?”

“She hates that name. Her grandma is a seer, and her mom named her Divina because she thought that giving her a name that was close to ‘divination’ would make it more likely she would be a seer, too.” Henry rolled his eyes.

Killian chuckled. “Did it?”

“Nope. But Div said that sometimes the ‘wretched gift’, her words, doesn’t pass on to another person in the family until someone who already has it dies. So when her grandma dies she might get it. She doesn’t want it, though.” He shrugged at Emma’s questioning look. “She thinks it would drive her crazy, because it took her grandma almost twenty years to learn how to control it. And Div wants to go into something scientific rather than spend so much of her life dealing with something that doesn’t have an explanation.”

“Fair enough. Did you learn anything about Dr. Mattison?” Emma smoothed Henry’s hair as they got on the subway.

“Nothing really helpful. She really respects him, but she shut up whenever I tried to ask about anything magic. Unless it had to do with her family. She didn’t have a problem talking about seeing the future. She _did_ say that most of the people that Kyle treats get better, but he does send a lot of them to regular doctors first.” He looked at Emma and Killian. “Did he say why he does that? If he can help them, why would he send them somewhere else?”

“Apparently his magic is limited. After he uses it he must let it regenerate. I don’t believe he wishes to waste it on someone who could be helped in another way,” Killian told him.

“Yeah, but he also said that potions aren’t his thing. How is that disgusting crap he gave me not a potion? Other than being more sludge than liquid, I mean.” Emma raised a brow.

“I don’t think he used any magic in the mixture. He seemed to do something else when he put it on your neck and hands. I think he used magic in addition to the mixture rather than as a part of it.”

“I guess I’ll ask him when we start training tomorrow.”

“What time do you start?” Henry asked his mom.

“Five. We can keep looking for those other ingredients earlier in the day.”

“Is there any chance we can take the day off? We’ve been walking around for over a month now without a break, and we made substantial progress today.” Killian watched Emma as she mulled that over, her expression changing slowly from protest to acceptance.

“You’re right. We’ve earned a break.” She nodded as the subway car’s doors opened.

“Awesome! Does that mean we can have Chinese food tonight? I want fried wontons!” Henry looked positively giddy.

“Yeah, kid.” Emma smiled at her son’s excitement. “I could go for some General Tso’s chicken myself.”

-.*.-.*.-.*.-

Emma’s training didn’t go well the next day. Or the day after that. Or that whole first week, for that matter. When she destroyed the failsafe in Storybrooke with Regina, she’d had no idea what she was doing, or how she did it. In Neverland Regina had taught her to call fire, and she’d managed it twice, but she hadn’t been able to replicate it again. She was pretty sure it was because Neverland had a lot more magic than the somewhat poorly named Land Without Magic did. Whatever the reason, she hadn’t made much progress in her current training.

She and Kyle were worried that she might expend too much energy in her training to still be able to make the potions, so she hadn’t done any ‘conjuring’ or anything since the first day when she tried the fire. Instead, Kyle had her trying to tap into her magic without actually using it. This involved a whole lot of sitting still and trying to visualize her magic inside her. Emma tried balls of light, fire, string, and rubber bands. She tried vials of various liquids and boxes of random things (at least the barrel of monkeys was a little amusing). She even tried an egg of silly putty and a can of silly string (those were both desperate attempts on the sixth day).

On the seventh, Kyle decided that they would take a break from the meditation, stating that Emma clearly didn’t have the concentration for it at the moment. Instead he had her trying to absorb magic that he left lying around. He’d leave a bit in an object in the room and have Emma try to sniff it out and then take the magic. By the end of the lesson she could successfully determine which item he’d infused with magic, but she still couldn’t do anything with the magic itself.

Killian and Henry spent most of her training time looking for the last three ingredients. They hadn’t even identified two of them, and they hadn’t been able to find a place that stocked the third.

When Emma got back to the apartment on day seven she found them sitting on the couch, a bowl of popcorn between them and more than a few soda cans on the floor, watching some ‘reality’ survivalist show.

“Scoot over.” She nudged Killian’s leg with her foot and plopped down next to him when he obliged. “Did you guys find anything today?”

“We found a shop that will order the _Desmodium gyrans_ for us. It should be in sometime next week. That clerk was also able to tell us what the tergemmon is, but he said he can’t get it.” Killian fetched a glass of water and a bottle of ibuprofen when he saw Emma trying to stretch her neck and shoulders. “He didn’t know anything about the third.”

“Thanks,” she told him with a grateful smile. He just told her to sit on the floor in front of him after she downed a couple of pills. When she complied he pushed her hair over one shoulder and worked his fingers into the knots in her shoulder. As she leaned back against his legs she asked the obvious question. “What’s tergemmon?”

“Some endangered poisonous slug that only exists in a three-square-mile area in Portugal,” Henry answered around the popcorn in his mouth without looking from the TV screen.

“We’re putting something poisonous in a potion that we’re going to drink?”

“The Dancing Plant will counteract the poisonous part,” Killian reassured her. “Love… Why are your hands blue? And glowing?” Emma looked down at her hands, revealed as she pulled off her gloves.

“Oh, that bastard! Henry, you didn’t hear that.” Henry absently _mmhmm_ ’d. “He said he was giving me homework, but I thought it was the gloves!”

“I don’t follow.” Killian picked up her right hand and examined it.

“He put magic in my gloves, and I thought I was just supposed to try to extract it. But he must’ve made it so that it would go in my hands instead.” _Jackass._

“Better motivation, I suppose.”

Emma was too miffed to appreciate the tactic. ”He could’ve just _told_ me that’s what he was going to do. What if I had stopped at the store and taken off my gloves there? It’s not like I could explain blue _glowing_ hands to a cashier!” Killian was (unsuccessfully) trying to hide a smile. She scowled at him.

Henry tore his eyes from the TV long enough to look at Emma’s hands. _What is so riveting about this show? Do we really need to learn survival skills for a desert area? Were we planning a trip to some unpopulated desert? Didn’t think so._ “Better get started then,” was all he said to her. She spared a scowl for him, too.

“Fine,” she huffed. She warmed up some leftover spaghetti and sat at the table, staring at one hand while she mechanically twirled pasta around a fork with the other. She made a sound reminiscent of a growl when Killian tried to sit across from her. She saw Henry smile and shake his head at Killian out of the corner of her eye. Killian backed off, hands raised as a placating gesture.

Emma split her concentration between pulling Kyle’s magic out of her hands and throwing every nasty name she knew at him in her head. Then she invented some new ones.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Reviews are underrated TV shows, and constructive criticism is _Firefly._


	14. 100% the Reason

Henry fell asleep on the couch a little after nine, not even halfway into another of those reality-ish survivalist shows. Emma was only vaguely aware of Killian pulling off Henry’s shoes and covering him with a blanket before starting to clean up the popcorn-and-soda mess they had made. He occasionally brought her snacks and glasses of water, but stopped after she growled (yes, actually _growled_ ) at him for distracting her. He just raised his eyebrows, somewhat amused, and cleared the table of everything but the water. Somewhere in the back of her mind, Emma was aware of him moving about the apartment, quiet though he tried to be. About midnight she noticed that the apartment had grown still.

Emma was able to de-glowify her hands after a solid eight hours and forty-three minutes (not that she was keeping track or anything). Upside: she had finally succeeded in pulling Kyle’s magic from her hands (transferred from the gloves he had originally enchanted) and sort of absorbing it into her own magic. Downside: it was nearly four A.M., she was very hungry, and she _really_ had to pee.

After a mad dash to the bathroom and scarfing down another bowl of spaghetti, Emma realized that Killian had fallen asleep in Henry’s usual spot on the bed. After briefly considering waking them both up to switch places, she decided against it ( _not fair of me to deprive_ them _of sleep, too)_ and changed into her pajamas. Lifting the covers slowly, she slid under the blankets as gently as she could, taking care to leave a considerable distance between her and Killian. _It’s not that I don’t trust myself. I just wouldn’t want Henry to wake up first and think something was going on. Yep, that’s 100% the reason._ Tired as she was, Emma barely noticed when an arm snaked around her waist and pulled her towards the other side of the bed. She was asleep before she could realize that, instead of protesting, she had nuzzled into Killian’s chest.

-.*.-.*.-.*.-

“Mom, wake up! Breakfast is almost done.”

“Wake me up for lunch,” Emma muttered into her pillow… which smelled suspiciously (and deliciously) like Killian.

“Can’t. You’re supposed to train with Kyle all day today, remember?” Henry pulled the pillow out for under Emma’s head and whipped her blankets off. She whimpered and curled into a ball in an attempt to stave off the relatively cold morning air. Henry poked her in the shoulder a few times before letting out an exasperated sigh. “Fine,” he told her as he headed back to the kitchen. _Victory_.

A moment later Emma tumbled onto the floor. Now thoroughly awake, she glared up at Killian. “That wasn’t necessary,” she grumbled.

“Apparently it was. Come and eat. You’ll need to leave for your training in less than an hour.” He offered her his hand to help her up, which she accepted after another few seconds of glaring. He pushed her towards the table, pulling out a chair for her. She sat down and watched Killian and her son in the kitchen. It was a small space, but they never bumped into each other or even had to ask the other to move. It reminded her that they had already been on this quest (Henry still liked calling it that) for nearly two months. They had all gone from bumping into each other and trying to do (or avoid doing) the same things to being a well-oiled machine.

Henry walked into an open drawer as he was bringing plates and silverware to the table. _Well, almost well-oiled._

“Did you sleep well, love?” Killian tossed a sly look over Henry’s head at her.

“Yes, if not for long enough.” _Excellent not reacting, self._ “Did you cook the entire kitchen?” Henry and Killian were setting down dishes of bacon, sausage, eggs Benedict, fruit, hash-browns, toast, pancakes, and veggie omelets.

“If you can’t be well-rested, at least you can be well-fed,” Killian told her.

Henry shrugged when she looked at him. “We’ve been up for a while. And we couldn’t decide what you’d want after working on your blue-hands thing all night.” He loaded sausage on his plate as he surveyed the table. He looked up at Killian with an almost panicked expression. “We forgot the-“

“I’ve got it,” Killian cut him off as he opened the fridge. Returning to the table, he set the carton of orange juice in front of Henry. “Something wrong, Swan?” He asked after seeing Emma’s expression.

She shook her head, as much to clear it as to answer his question. “Just that someone’s going to have to roll me to Kyle’s when we’re done eating.” _And you two spent who knows how long making a ridiculous amount of food to make me feel better. And seeing you work together kinda gives me the warm-and-fuzzies… And these hash-browns are very hot. Ouch._ “What are you two up to today?”

“I was thinking perhaps we could accompany you to your training.” Emma recognized that expression. It was one part worried she’d be annoyed at the request, one part hoping she wouldn’t ask why, and four parts trying to hide the other two.

So, of course, she asked why they wanted to go. “After you guys watched the first session, you both decided it was boring and your time could be spent better looking for the List-o’-Stuff.”

Henry was the one to answer, though she couldn’t miss Killian’s uncomfortable shift in his chair. “We can’t really do anything else until we get those last two ingredients. Maybe Kyle can help with those, too.”

“He already said he doesn’t know anything about them.”

“Yeah, but now that we know what tergemmon is, maybe he’ll know how to get it. And maybe he’ll let us look through his library for the other one.”

They always called the last ingredient ‘the other one’ or ‘that last one’ or something similar. ‘Flmbrbogn’ didn’t exactly roll off the tongue. They’d checked other languages, even treated it as (bad) phonetic spelling and transcribed it into languages with non-Roman alphabets. Nyet. Emma was worried it wasn’t something that existed in this land, and that Gold and Regina either hadn’t realized that or hadn’t bothered to mention it.

Killian still looked uncomfortable. Remembering how he had let David do the talking in Neverland to avoid lying, Emma nodded at Henry. “Alright. Go shower and get dressed. We’ll clean up.” As soon as she heard the shower running she faced Killian. “And the real reason is?”

“Why would you think-“

“Please. My lie detector might still not be up to snuff, but I can still read body language. Why the sudden desire to watch me train?” The annoyed Emma he’d been worried about surfaced. She threw leftovers into containers more forcefully than was strictly necessary as she talked.

“I wanted to have a word with Dr. Mattison regarding the direction your training is taking. He did give you glowing Smurf hands, after all.” Killian was only slightly less violent in his cleanup.

“First of all… you need to stop watching morning cartoons. Second… _Smurfs_ is still on TV? Third, stop with the half-truth thing.” She slammed the fridge shut, all leftovers tucked safely away from her rising temper, and leaned against it to give him her _don’t you dare bullshit me_ face.

After watching her for a moment ( _stop gauging my mood and give it to me straight_ ), he demanded “How did you get that bruise on your hip?”

That threw her for a second. _Hmm… defensive, apologetic, snarky, indignant… which way to go?_

“Perving on me in my sleep? How gentlemanly.” _Snarky it is, then._

“I’m hardly to blame if those things you call clothing don’t move with you when you toss in your sleep. How did you get the bruise?”

Emma sighed. “A few days ago Kyle wanted to see if I could catch energy balls.”

Killian’s eyes did that narrow, angry thing. “He hit you with a magic energy ball?”

“No! I missed most of them. When I caught one I fell back on my hip. Hence the bruise.” _Yeah, that doesn’t seem to make things any better._ At his stubborn expression she let out another sigh. “Fine, you can come. But no threatening to kill him, okay? I think that first time was enough.”

His eyes softened at her acquiescence. “I make no promises.” He brushed her hair behind her ear and ran his thumb along her jaw. She closed her eyes and leaned into his hand.

“I need to go change,” she murmured when she heard the shower shut off. “Be ready to leave in ten minutes.”

Killian only nodded before moving his hand from her face, brushing his fingers across her neck as he did. Emma held back a shiver as she went to get her clothes. _Totally because I’m in my PJs and it’s kinda cold. Yep, that’s 100% the reason._

“We’re leaving in ten,” she told Henry as he came out of the bathroom.

“’Kay. I’m packing snacks.”

She smiled at her son. “Pack some chips for me. And chocolate. And sour straws.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Reviews are cherished cooking supplies and constructive criticism is that one soup pot that's older than I am and makes all homemade soup taste RIGHT. In all caps.


	15. It's Empty

Kyle agreed easily enough to letting Killian and Henry dig through his library, though it was obvious he didn’t think they’d find anything useful. Emma wasn’t as sure. She wasn’t a big reader (who has time to read when you’re going from breaking one curse to traversing Neverland to trying to break another curse?), but even she was envious of his library. It reminded her of the one in the beast’s castle in the Disney _Beauty and the Beast_ movie. Belle (both the cartoon version and the real one) would’ve been over the moon to see it.

As Emma got herself situated, Kyle showed her boys ( _since when are they ‘my boys’?_ ) to the library, trying to answer Henry’s questions as quickly as they were asked. Killian lagged behind just long enough to murmur “no more bruises” and kiss her cheek. She suspected he would tell Kyle the same thing, only in a louder voice and without the kiss.

Her suspicions were confirmed when the doctor stepped into their training room. (It was a weird mix of dojo and office space. He seemed to be rich: he had a huge house full of weird rooms. One was devoted entirely to the storage of empty storage containers. Really.)

“Your pirate is very protective of you.”

“He’s not my pirate,” Emma responded automatically. They’d been having some form of this conversation for the past week.

Kyle gave her a disbelieving ‘hmm’. “Interesting that he only threatens me _now_. What, pray tell, may have happened that caused him to find out about your bruised hip now, if you didn’t tell him about it before?” He wiggled his eyebrows at her. _You’re always far too interested in this subject._

“Can we just get started, please?”

“Of course. I see you completed your homework.” Kyle pointed at her hands with a smile.

“Yeah, about that: you’re a jackass.” Emma scowled at him. “You could’ve warned me. Or, you know, just _not_ have turned my hands blue. I was up ‘til four fixing them.”

“And you were successful, which was the point. I figured you’d be less likely to call it quits if you could double as emergency lighting.” Kyle’s grin didn’t falter at her continued (and deepened) scowl. “On the _bright_ side… Now you know you can do it.”

Emma didn’t smile at the pun. “So, what are we doing today? More absorbing? Meditation again? Or are we going back to fire-lighting?”

“What, you don’t want to try the energy balls again?”

Emma hid a blush. “I’m supposed to avoid picking up more bruises today.” She found Kyle’s knowing smile a tad bit infuriating.

“I see. Let’s start with meditation then. Hopefully now that you’ve intentionally used your magic you’ll have a better sense of it.” Kyle pointed to the middle of the blue training mat that occupied a good chunk of the floor.

“What do you usually use this room for? I keep forgetting to ask.” Emma sat cross-legged at the center of the mat while Kyle dimmed the lights.

He looked around the room before he answered, maybe trying to see it as an outsider might. “Physical conditioning, mostly. Martial arts training… Sometimes sparring.”

_Hah, the dojo thought was spot-on, then._ “Why the office space?”

He shrugged. “I like to take care of business in a relaxing environment.”

Emma snorted. “And your sparring room in the most relaxing room in your house?”

“Sparring is my meditation. The traditional kind never worked well for me. Sitting, trying to clear my mind? I just always found more to think about. Martial arts, though… I have to focus on my form, not getting hurt, and anticipating my opponent’s next move and how to counter it. No time to think about other things.” He sat across from Emma, mirroring her posture.

She stared at him. “You could’ve mentioned that at any point during the _several_ hours you had me sitting around trying to clear my mind and think of my magic as a jar of jelly beans.”

“Jelly beans? Really?” She waved away his interruption.

“Why can’t we try the fighting meditation thing? Sitting around doing nothing has never been my thing, either.”

“If you already had training beyond basic-to-intermediate self-defense, or we weren’t under the clock, I’d consider it. As it is, I’d have to train you in both martial arts _and_ magic, and we don’t have that kind of time.” To Emma’s surprise, Kyle was actually a bit harsh. That didn’t happen. Even when he was pushing her harder or reprimanding her for her lack of focus his tone of voice never went past patiently stern. “Now focus. Try imagining a bowl of popcorn or something.”

“Because that’s so much better than a jar of jelly beans,” Emma muttered. He gave her his stern ‘no more joking around’ face. She sighed and closed her eyes, trying to visualize her magic as a giant tub of movie theater popcorn.

_Great. Now I’m hungry again._

-.*.-.*.-.*.-

Killian and Henry weren’t having much luck in the library. A few different encyclopedias (regular, poisonous animals, and invertebrates of South-Western Europe) had told them more about the slug they knew as tergemmon. The common name was the Portuguese dancing slug ( _Geomalacus saltator_ ). It really was only found in about a three square mile area of Portugal. Nothing useful about how to get their hands on one, though. And absolutely nothing on the flmbrbogn.

“What do you have there?” Killian asked as Henry carried a stack of untitled books to the table they were using.

“Journals, I think.” Henry pulled the top book off the stack. “Yeah, and whoever wrote this one could have used some handwriting lessons.” He set it aside and flipped through the next one. His eyes brightened. “This one’s a spell book!” He handed it to Killian and grabbed another.

Killian thumbed through the spell book. “Where did you find these?”

“Behind the case Kyle told us not to touch.” Killian raised an amused brow. “He never said we couldn’t look _behind_ it,” Henry defended himself. “Besides, you don’t think it’s a _little_ fishy that he put a bookcase off limits?”

Killian had, which was why he’d planned on looking through it the next time Henry went to the bathroom. “I think I know why.” He showed Henry the page he was looking at. “Some of these spells are extremely dark. This one, for example, couldn’t possibly be used for anything good.” Rituals to melt a person’s flesh were like that. He picked up the journal Henry had set aside. “This was written in the 1600s by Beatrice Mattison. One of Kyle’s ancestors?”

“So, what, he didn’t want us to know his family used to do bad things?”

_Or he doesn’t wish for us to know he’s not a paragon of virtue himself_. “Perhaps… Would you sort through these? Separate any spell books from everything else.”

“What are you doing?” Henry asked as Killian approached the forbidden bookcase.

Killian didn’t answer, just inspected the case closely. After running his hand along the top, sides, and as much of the back as he could reach, he started pulling books off one by one, replacing them without so much as opening the covers. Henry shook his head and started to sort the books.

Just as he threw the last book onto the journal pile, he heard Killian say “Henry, go stand behind that door, would you?” Killian pointed at the very thick, open wooden door to the library.

“Why?” Henry wanted to know, even as he moved to obey.

“If a person goes to the trouble to conceal a door, he might also go to the trouble of booby-trapping it.”

Once Henry was safely blocked by the library door, Killian pulled the small lever he had found on the bottom shelf of the case.

“Then you put me in the wrong place,” Henry said as a bookcase on the opposite side of the room from Killian (which, incidentally, put it just a few feet from Henry) swung open. “At least it didn’t explode,” he offered at Killian’s disgruntled expression.

“Stay there,” Killian ordered before slowly entering the hidden room. He felt along the wall carefully until he found a light switch. _Well, that’s disappointing._

“What is it?” Henry peeked around Killian into the room.

“Didn’t I tell you to stay put?”

“I never said I would.” Henry walked further into the room. “It’s empty.”

“Yes, I gathered as much.”

“Why bother hiding an empty room?”

“I would imagine it wasn’t always empty.” Killian pointed out as he ushered Henry back into the library. He pushed the lever in the case back into place, making sure the hidden door closed before he replaced the books hiding the lever. “Did you get those books sorted?”

“Yep. It looks like each spell book goes with a journal.” Henry picked up Beatrice’s journal and showed Killian a spell book with her name and handwriting as proof. “I think we should look through the spell books to see if any of them have that last ingredient in them.”

“And if it comes up, we can look in the corresponding journal to see if there’s any helpful information.” _Preferably what it is and where we might find an abundant supply._ “Good thinking, lad.”

-.*.-.*.-.*.-

Emma’s concentration was broken by a low ‘ping’. Relieved (two hours in, she’d tried half a dozen visualizations without success), she looked up as Kyle tapped his smartphone’s screen a few times. “Problem?” she asked at his frown.

“Your son and boyfriend are snooping.” He tilted his phone’s screen her way, allowing her to see camera footage of Killian and Henry looking around an empty room.

“He’s not-“

“Yeah, yeah. Spare me the denial this once, would ya?” Despite his frown, he didn’t seem angry as he watched the screen. He clicked it off and headed for the door.

“Are you going to kick them out?”

“Nope. Keep practicing. I’ll be back in a few.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Sneak up on them and see how they react,” he told her with a grin. He threw a wink at her just before he closed the door.

Blatantly disobeying orders, Emma got up and stretched. Two hours sitting cross-legged and straight-backed wasn’t conducive to comfort. As she ambled around the room she reviewed the techniques she had tried. _Popcorn, a miniature sun, a bucket of sand, a sand_ castle _, a jar of frosting, and a bottle of wine… Maybe I’m just in need of a beach vacation with snacks and drinks. Yeah, I could definitely go for that._ The real bummer was that Kyle had been right: After fixing her hands, she could feel her magic. But she couldn’t grab onto it like she was supposed to. She couldn’t even find it; she could just feel it was there.

She sat back down and stared at her hands, trying to remember how her magic had felt the night before when it absorbed the enchantment of blue glowing annoyingness.

-.*.-.*.-.*.-

“I’m impressed. You made it almost two hours before you dug into the one case I told you _not_ to touch.”

If Kyle had been hoping to startle Killian and Henry, he was bound to be disappointed. Neither looked up from the books they were studying.

“I find it interesting that you intended to hide these books,” Killian responded, tapping the cover of one of the journals. “As far as I can tell, they are the only books pertaining to magic which contain more than just theory.”

“Yeah… And what’s up with the empty secret room?” Henry added as he turned a page.

“That room’s been empty since my grandfather passed the house on to my mother. I have no idea what it was used for before that. And I’ve been through those books. None say anything about the flmbrbogn you’re looking for, and most aren’t very pleasant to read.” Kyle joined them at the table.

“Why did you tell us not to touch that case, then?” Killian asked reasonably.

“Because it’s full of valuable first editions and I didn’t want to risk them getting damaged,” Kyle told them dryly. Henry and Killian exchanged a look.

“Oh. Sorry.” Henry looked up at the doctor. “How’s my mom’s training going?”

“Not as well as I’d hoped. Emma’s still having trouble getting in touch with her magic. She hasn’t figured out how to grasp it yet.”

“Shouldn’t you be helping her with that, then?” Killian suggested. He couldn’t quite bring himself to trust the doctor, much less like him. _You nearly poison Emma, you bruise her, you turn her hands blue, and you hide books relating to the very subject for which we seek answers._

“I was. Then someone activated the camera in the alcove.” Kyle looked pointedly at both of them.

“Is there anything we can do to help?” Henry asked.

“Not right now.” Henry’s face fell. “But I’ll let you know if I think of anything.” Kyle glanced around the library. “The only books I didn’t go through after Emma first asked me about those potion components are on that shelf over there. I don’t remember there being anything about magic on it, but I could be wrong.”

Killian waited a full two minutes after Kyle left before searching the shelf he had pointed out. “Keep looking through those spell books, Henry. Maybe he missed something.” Henry ‘hmm’d in response. Going by the titles, Killian had to conclude that Kyle had been right. Nothing sounded like it would be useful. _Except…_ He pulled a worn book with a leather cover from the shelf. Embossed in silver on the front (but almost completely faded from the side) was the title _Common Items from Uncommon Lands,_ authored by V.K. Nachalo.

Among the chapters listed in the table of contents were “Enchanting Objects of the Enchanted Forest”, “Never-before-known Animals of Neverland”, “The Wondrous Wonders of Wonderland”, and “What to Avoid in the Void”.

_What is it they say here? Yahtzee?_

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Reviews are cancelled Fox shows and constructive criticism is _Firefly, Drive, Dollhouse_ , and _Dark Angel_. (I might still be a bit miffed about those.)


	16. Magic Grenades

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy birthday to me! As of this chapter, this story is all caught up with ff.net. Everything after this will be new material. Yippee!

When Kyle reentered the training room, Emma was cycling back through some of her earlier visualizations.

“What is it this time?”

“Wine bottle. Pinot grigio,” Emma answered without opening her eyes.

“Maybe you should try cabernet. Or a pitcher of margaritas. Pour me a glass while you’re at it.”

Emma opened her eyes just enough to give her teacher a ‘bite me’ look. “Or _you_ could get me an _actual_ drink.”

“Is alcohol usually your solution to everything?”

“It certainly couldn’t hurt.” Emma remembered a similar exchange she’d had with Killian in Neverland. _Huh. Why didn’t I think of that before?_ “Shut up, I wanna try something else.”

Kyle held up his hands in surrender and sat across from her again, studying her ‘magical appearance.’ (Emma had no clue what that meant, other than it was what he looked at to judge her progress. And that he really hated when she used the term ‘aura’.) After a few minutes he clapped his hands together and let out a small cheer, breaking her concentration.

“You got it! You grabbed onto your magic!”

“And so you thought it was a good idea to stop me?”

He shrugged. “I thought you should know you were successful. What visualization did you use? Don’t tell me it was actually the margaritas.”

“No, now be quiet. I want to try again. In fact, go away if you’re gonna keep interrupting me.” She shifted a bit to get more comfortable.

“It’s my house.”

“And I’m sure it’s full of things that can keep you entertained. Or go make sure Killian and Henry haven’t read from the wrong book and lit themselves on fire or something.”

Kyle snorted. “As nosy as they are, they’re both too smart for that. Also, they don’t have enough magic between them to snuff out a candle,” he reminded her. But he did leave the room, leaving her to her practice.

And practice she did. She visualized a very familiar (and seemingly bottomless) flask of rum, and then imagined pouring her magic into it. It wasn’t easy; if something broke her concentration or she let go of the visualization for any reason, the flask disappeared and her magic went back to being all willy-nilly inside of her. Kyle had told her that, with enough experience, she would eventually be able to keep all of her magic in her imaginary container without having to think about it.

After about three dozen short-lived successes (she hadn’t been able to maintain it for more than three minutes at a time) she decided that she’d earned a break. Also, her head kind of hurt and she was sort of salivating at the thought of Henry’s bag-o’-snacks.

-.*.-.*.-.*.-

As Emma approached the library she could hear that a discussion was going on.

“So you’re saying you don’t have anything that could help us kill Pan?” _Good question, Killian. Wonder why_ I _didn’t think to ask that. Oh wait, I did. Like, a week ago._

Kyle responded calmly, despite Killian’s less-than-calm tone of voice. “I’m not much for violence.”

Henry spoke up before Killian could let loose whatever scathing retort he had planned. “Can you think of anything that would help us _defeat_ Pan?”

“Or at least find out which potion we’ll need. We don’t need the flmbrbogn for the memory potion.” _Another good question… Which I_ didn’t _think to ask. Damn._

Emma saw Kyle shrug as she made her way into the library. “You could visit Divina’s grandma. She’s a seer, she might be able to tell you which you should make.”

Henry chimed in again. “What about the whole ‘defeating Pan’ thing? Do you know any defensive spells, at least?”

Kyle rubbed the back of his head, not entirely comfortable with this line of thought. “I’m sure some of these books have something, and I can get my hands on a few others. I’ll need help with the research, though. I don’t have time to do it all myself. I’ve cut back too much on hours at both the hospital and my clinic as it is.”

Emma was not just a little bit miffed. She had only just become able to grab on to her magic, and now they wanted defensive spells? _Not that it’s a bad idea, but still._ “Since I’m the one who’d actually have to _do_ the spells, I’m gonna point out that some pre-made things might be better. Magic grenades, maybe?”

Kyle sighed. _What are_ you _frustrated about? It’s not like_ you’re _being asked to do big stuff after just taking a crash course in magic._ “Weren’t you practicing?”

She crossed her arms. “Yes, and now I’m looking for food.”

Henry looked at her. She was surprised to see a worried look on his face. “Why does using your magic always make you so hungry and tired? My mom doesn’t eat even half as much as you do… My other mom.” Killian’s expression nearly matched Henry’s, though with a bit of anger thrown in. Emma guessed that anger was directed at Kyle. _It’s not_ his _fault… Probably._

Kyle shrugged. “First learning how to use your magic is a bit like first starting to exercise regularly after a long period of inactivity. Only, instead of aching muscles and an amped up metabolism causing fatigue and hunger, it’s tapping into that energy that wears you out. You might be more prone to grouchiness, too. It’ll pass, mostly, once she has the hang of it.”

“Until then, I’ll just eat everything in sight.” _Not now with the leering, Killian._ “So, seriously. Magic grenades. Is that a doable thing, or just something I saw on _Angel_ once?”

Kyle sighed. “I don’t know. Look up defensive potions and how to make grenades and maybe we can rig something up.”

Emma turned to her son. “Henry, feel like researching home-made grenades?”

He shrugged. “Sure, but don’t blame me when the police come barging through the door to drag me out in handcuffs.”

“I’m pretty sure they’ll focus on the woman who asks her son to Google explosives, so you should be okay. Did you find something?” Emma asked Killian, who had returned to combing through the book he had discovered. Kyle looked over Killian’s shoulder.

“Huh. I thought I lost that years ago.”

“It’s a book on things from other lands. Wonderland, Neverland, the Enchanted Forest, something called the Void, there’s maybe two dozen in here.” Killian answered Emma, ignoring Kyle completely.

“I’m sorry… Did you say two _dozen_ different lands?” Emma had obviously learned that there were others, but she had never imagined that there might be so many. _One dozen, maybe. I mean, we already know about, what, five?_

“Yes, and it implies that there are more that the author didn’t explore.”

“Where did you find that?” Kyle asked with not a small amount of curiosity. Emma would describe his expression as befuddled that he hadn’t lost the book after all.

“Among the books you said were unlikely to be helpful. Great memory you’ve got there.” Kyle waved Killian’s criticism aside and went to inspect the shelf, still looking incredibly confused.

“Whatever. Any chance it mentions our mystery ingredient?” Emma took Kyle’s place in looking over Killian’s shoulder.

“Not yet, but I’ve only skimmed most of it. I’ve only gotten through full chapters on two of the lands so far.”

“You know what? Why don’t you guys take some of these with you and look through them at home?” Kyle’s suggested almost absently. He was still intently scrutinizing the bookcase.

“No more practice for today?” Emma was surprised. They’d been there just over four hours, which was far less than the all-day training session that they’d had planned.

“Now that you’ve got the hang of it you should be able to practice at home for a while. Try to hold on to it longer, and figure out how to keep it going when you’re focused on something else at the same time. We can pick up again in a few days.”

Henry, Killian, and Emma just shrugged at each other and started gathering books into a pile to take home. Emma asked them to load their research material into the car so she could talk to Kyle for a minute.

“You seem concerned that Killian found that book. What gives?”

Kyle turned from the bookcase to look at her. “For starters, I haven’t seen that book in four years. And believe me, I’ve looked for it. For kickers, the last time I saw it, it wasn’t written in English, it was in Latin.”

That made Emma pause for a minute. “So… a potentially helpful book turned up out of nowhere and somehow translated itself?”

“Hence my concern.”

_Yeah… not thinking about this right now._ “I’m just going to chalk it up to luck and hope that it’s useful.”

Kyle waved her off, turning back to the case and picking up each book to examine it thoroughly. “Let me know if it does anything else weird.”

_Yeah,_ really _not going to think about what that might mean._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Reviews are like getting your dream job and constructive criticism is like getting a position on SG-1 (the team that so TOTALLY exists, not the fake but awesome TV show).


	17. Is That... A New Chapter?

They called Divina’s grandma (Sheila) right after leaving Kyle’s place and set up a time to meet the next day. As soon as they got back to the apartment (well, after eating lunch) Henry jumped on the computer to do his very age-appropriate research on homemade explosive devices and Killian sat down to continue reading the conveniently self-translating book. After telling them both to let her know if they found something good, Emma settled herself on the bed for more practice.

By the time either of them had something to tell her, she could keep her hold on her magic for almost ten minutes at a time, but she was still distracted by every little thing. Which was why she was pulled out of her meditation rather easily when Killian stood in front of the bed flipping through his book.

“It’s mentioned the flmbrbogn a few times, but it-“ He looked up at her and stopped short. She gave him a questioning look at his silence. He swallowed and then told her, “Love, you’re floating.”

“What?” Emma looked down and realized that, while she was still sitting cross-legged, she was a least a foot above the bed. Her shock translated into immediately dropping and rolling off the bed. _At least it was a soft landing, mostly._ She pointed out the obvious while she righted herself. “That was new… What did the book say?”

Killian shook his head, presumably to clear it. “It mentions it a few times, but doesn’t actually say what it is. Mostly just comments of ‘this plant or animal is less potent than flmbrbogn, but can act as a substitute in most spells.’ It seems to be known in a few lands, though.”

“Have you gotten through all of them already?”

He shook his head again, this time obviously to indicate a ‘no’. “I’ve read through half. I should be able to get through the rest tonight after dinner.”

“Has Henry found anything?”

“Yes, though he’s been looking at the door every five minutes expecting the police to kick it in. It’s disturbing how much information he can find on making explosives with just a few clicks of a mouse.”

“I don’t disagree, but right now it’s convenient, so I’m not going to complain.” Emma took Killian’s offered hand to help her off the bed. He took the opportunity to pull her close to him, giving her a playful grin. He looped an arm around her waist and brushed her hair back.

“You know, I never thought I’d be nostalgic for the days of dodging a giant’s security system, but I find myself constantly on the watch for trip wires to pull you back from.”

Emma couldn’t help but let a small smile slip out. “Since when do you stand on ceremony?”

Killian’s playful expression faded, giving way to one that made Emma’s heart skip a beat. He leaned in to speak quietly in her ear. “Since we don’t have the luxury of time for anything else.” _And there’s that shiver again._

He pulled away from her and walked into the main room, mentioning casually over his shoulder that he and Henry had made pasta for dinner, if she was interested. _He does these things just to torture me, doesn’t he?_

-.*.-.*.-.*.-

Emma would have been all for Henry giving her a rundown on any ideas he might have come up with over dinner, but Killian insisted that they spend at least one meal without their noses to the grindstone. Unfortunately, this also meant that Emma couldn’t ask Killian about the realms detailed in the book. Flmbrbogn and useful information aside, how could she _not_ be curious about other worlds? She did have to admit that it was nice to focus on nothing more difficult that eating a delicious penne alfredo for half an hour.

This lack of distractions meant that when the book, which Killian had set on the coffee table, _glowed_ (not blue), Emma noticed right away.

“The book-“ Killian cut her off with a reminder of her promise of no shoptalk at the table.

“Yeah, I know, but… the _book_.” She pointed to, well, _point out_ , that there was a very good reason for breaking that promise. Both Killian and Henry, who’d had their backs to it, turned to look at the still-glowing book. The glow was a different color now, though, Emma realized. It had started out bright orange, so very _neon_ that she probably wouldn’t have been able to miss it even if she’d been in engrossed in a serious conversation. Now, it was kind of going through the rainbow.

Once it finally stopped, Killian approached it apprehensively. Henry looked over his shoulder as he opened it. Emma sent off a quick text to Kyle to let him know that the book had, in fact, done something weird. She joined her guys at the coffee table just as Killian was finishing his inspection. He left it open a couple dozen pages from the end.

Henry came out from behind Killian and peered more closely at the page title. “Is that… a new chapter?”

It was. That, or it had been written on invisible ink on invisible and incorporeal paper until now, because the first time they’d flipped through it, there certainly hadn’t been a section titled “Defensive Magic: Grenades & Gadgets Galore.”

When Henry moved to turn the page, the entire section separated from the rest of the book and bound itself into a mockery of a school workbook. The main book gently shut itself and the workbook settled just by it, positioned perfectly for Henry to read.

“Don’t touch that just yet,” Killian said as he barred Henry from picking up his mini-book. Killian picked up the larger book and read the spine again before studying what would have been the copyright page if, you know, it wasn’t a freaky magic book made before © was a thing. “We should look into this author,” Killian said, handing the book to Emma so she could inspect it herself.

_Common Items from Uncommon Lands,_ V.K. Nachalo. 1423

_I wonder if that’s A.D. or B.C._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’m going to try to pick this up again, despite have lost all of my notes for this story. Again. I’m not even gonna pretend like I expect to be posting weekly, but hopefully it’ll be a couple times a month and I’ll finish up soon.
> 
> Reviews are fine cheese and constructive criticism is gouda!... Pun not initially intended, but welcome.


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